The English Novel In History 1950 To The Present

Written by a foremost scholar of contemporary culture and theory, this book offers not only a survey but also a historical and cultural context to British literature produced in the second half of the twentieth century.Steven Connor provides in-depth analyses of the novel and its relationship with its own form, with contemporary culture and with history. He incorporates an extensive and varied range of writers in his discussions such as* George Orwell* William Golding* Angela Carter* Doris Lessing * Timothy Mo* Hanif Kureishi* Marina Warner* Maggie GeeWritten by a foremost scholar of contemporary culture and theory, The English Novel in History, 1950 to the Present offers not only a survey but also a historical and cultural context to British literature produced in the second half of this century.

Steven Connor provides in-depth analyses of the novel and its relationship with its own form, with contemporary culture and with history. He incorporates an extensive and varied range of writers in his discussions such as * George Orwell * William Golding * Angela Carter * Doris Lessing * Timothy Mo * Hanif Kureishi * Marina Warner * Maggie Gee Written by a foremost scholar of contemporary culture and theory, The English Novel in History, 1950 to the Present offers not only a survey but also a historical and cultural context to British literature produced in the second half of this century.

The construction of history as a social common denominator is a powerful achievement of the nineteenth-century novel, a form dedicated to experimenting with democratic social practice as it conflicts with economic and feudal visions of social order. Through revisionary readings of familiar nineteenth-century texts The English Novel in History 1840-1895 takes a multidisciplinary approach to literary history. It highlights how narrative shifts from one construction of time to another and reformulates fundamental ideas of identity, nature and society. Elizabeth Ermarth discusses the range of novels alongside other cultural material, including painting, science, religious, political and economic theory. She explores the problems of how a society, as defined in democratic terms, can accommodate political, gender and class differences without resorting to hierarchy; and how narrowly conceived economic agendas compete with social cohesion. Students, advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and specialists will find this text invaluable.

A detailed examination of the growing genre of British fiction featuring archives and archival research, from A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning Possession to the paperback thrillers of popular novelists.

A fascinating survey of popular culture in Europe, from Celtic punk and British TV shows to Spanish fashion and Italian sports. From One Direction and Adele to Penelope Cruz and Alexander Skarsgard, many Europeans are becoming household names in the United States. This ready-reference guide covers international pop culture spanning music, literature, movies, television and radio, the Internet, sports, video games, and fashion, from the mid-20th century through the present day. The organization of the book—with entries arranged alphabetically within thematic chapters—allows readers to quickly find the topic they are seeking. Additionally, indexing allows for cross-cultural comparisons to be made between pop culture in Europe to that of the United States. An extensive chronology and lengthy introduction provide important contextual information, such as the United States' influence on movies, music, and the Internet; the effect of censorship on Internet and social media use; and the history of pop culture over the years. Topics feature key musicians, songs, books, actors and actresses, movies and television shows, popular websites, top athletes, games, clothing fads and designers, and much more.

This book scrutinizes a range of relatively overlooked post-WWII British women writers who sought to demonstrate that narrative prose fiction offered rich possibilities for aesthetic innovation. What unites all the primary authors in this volume is a commitment to challenging the tenets of British mimetic realism as a literary and historical phenomenon. This collection reassesses how British female novelists operated in relation to transnational vanguard networking clusters, debates and tendencies, both political and artistic. The chapters collected in this volume enquire, for example, whether there is something fundamentally different (or politically dissident) about female experimental procedures and perspectives. This book also investigates the processes of canon formation, asking why, in one way or another, these authors have been sidelined or misconstrued by recent scholarship. Ultimately, it seeks to refine a new research archive on mid-century British fiction by female novelists at least as diverse as recent and longer established work in the domain of modernist studies.

The English Novel in History 1700-1780 provides students with specific contexts for the early novel in response to a new understanding of eigtheenth-century Britain. It traces the social and moral representations of the period in extended readings of the major novelists, as well as evaluatiing the importance of lesser known ones. John Richetti traces the shifting subject matter of the novel, discussing: * scandalous and amatory fictions * criminal narratives of the early part of the century * the more disciplined, realistic, and didactic strain that appears in the 1740's and 1750's * novels promoting new ideas about the nature of domestic life * novels by women and how they relate to the shift of subject matter This original and useful book revises traditional literary history by considering novels from those years in the context of the transformation of Britain in the eighteenth century.

This essential introductory guide provides a comprehensive critical survey of the diverse and rich body of literary writing produced in England in the postwar period. John Brannigan explores the relationship between literature and history, and analyses how poets, playwrights and novelists have revisited notions of Englishness, represented Englands of the past, and sought to make new 'maps' of English culture and society. Orwell to the Present: Literature in England, 1945-2000 combines original readings of familiar texts with wide-ranging explorations of the principal themes and historical and cultural contexts of literature since the end of the Second World War. Writers considered in detail include: Martin Amis, Simon Armitage, Pat Barker, John Betjeman, Edward Bond, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, Sam Selvon, Graham Swift and Evelyn Waugh.