Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s IT by Whitney S. May (review)

Abstract

While this is one question Kohlmann’s study understandably does not address, the book will no doubt stimulate responses that do, and it stands among the strongest contributions to the growing new institutionalism in literary studies. British Literature and the Life of Institutions makes important claims about the relationships among philosophy, literature, and policy; the place of the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras in literary history; the speculative work accomplished by literary writing; the theory of institutions; the history of reformist thinking; the need to think institutionally in the present; and the continued relevance of the literary discourse of reform.