The Fiction Of Rushdie Barnes Winterson And Carter

Literature often reflects societal change, but it can also effect change by inspiring people to think in new ways. Four authors who encourage readers to question traditional boundaries are Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Jeanette Winterson and Angela Carter. This book takes an in-depth look at the works of these authors with specific emphasis on how they challenge religion (especially in its fundamentalist forms) and its intersections with history, politics, gender and sexuality. The study notes both differences and similarities among the four authors, whose writings broadly represent the major themes in contemporary British literature. Divided into two primary sections, the volume first takes a look at Rushdie and Barnes and their stance regarding historical and political issues. The second section concentrates on gender and sexuality in the writings of Winterson and Carter. Among the works examined are Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children; Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot and A History of the World in 10 1⁄2 Chapters; Winterson's Boating for Beginners and Written on the Body; and Carter's The Passion of New Eve and Heroes and Villains. The final chapter includes a brief survey of other significant figures in postmodern British literature, including Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, D.M. Thomas, Fay Weldon and Emma Tennant.

How did social, cultural and political events in Britain during the 1980s shape contemporary British fiction? Setting the fiction squarely within the context of Conservative politics and questions about culture and national identity, this volume reveals how the decade associated with Thatcherism frames the work of Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis, and Graham Swift, of Scottish novelists and new diasporic writers. How and why 1980s fiction is a response to particular psychological, social and economic pressures is explored in detail. Drawing on the rise of individualism and the birth of neo-liberalism, contributors reflect on the tense relations between 1980s politics and realism, and between elegy and satire. Noting the creation of a 'heritage industry' during the decade, the rise of the historical novel is also considered against broader cultural changes. Viewed from the perspective of more recent theorisations of crisis following both 9/11 and the 21st-century financial crash, this study makes sense of why and how writers of the 1980s constructed fictions in response to this decade's own set of fundamental crises.

The Handbook systematically charts the trajectory of the English novel from its emergence as the foremost literary genre in the early twentieth century to its early twenty-first century status of eccentric eminence in new media environments. Systematic chapters address ̒The English Novel as a Distinctly Modern Genreʼ, ̒The Novel in the Economy’, ̒Genres’, ̒Gender’ (performativity, masculinities, feminism, queer), and ̒The Burden of Representationʼ (class and ethnicity). Extended contextualized close readings of more than twenty key texts from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) to Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (2015) supplement the systematic approach and encourage future research by providing overviews of reception and theoretical perspectives.

This critical guide introduces major novelists and themes in British fiction from 1975 to 2005. It engages with concepts such as postmodernism, feminism, gender and the postcolonial, and examines the place of fiction within broader debates in contemporary culture.A comprehensive Introduction provides a historical context for the study of contemporary British fiction by detailing significant social, political and cultural events. This is followed by five chapters organised around the core themes: (1) Narrative Forms, (2) Contemporary Ethnicities, (3) Gender and Sexuality, (4) History, Memory and Writing, and (5) Narratives of Cultural Space.

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This revised new edition reviews Carter's novels in the light of recent critical developments and offers entirely new perspectives on her work. There is now extended discussion of Carter's most widely-studied novels, including The Passion of New Eve and Nights at the Circus, and discussion of the long essay The Sadeian Woman. This revised new edition reviews Carter's novels in the light of recent critical developments and offers entirely new perspectives on her work. There is now extended discussion of Carter's most widely-studied novels, including The Passion of New Eve and Nights at the Circus, and discussion of the long essay The Sadeian Woman.

Salman Rushdie is one of the most widely discussed and controversial of contemporary writers, particularly since the publication of 'The Satanic Verses'. This new edition covers all of Rushdie's work up to the present, and provides an account of the complex issues raised by the response to 'The Satanic Verses'.

This comprehensive introduction places the work of Julian Barnes into historical and theoretical context. Including a timeline of key dates, this guide explores his characteristic literary techniques, offers extensive readings of all 10 novels and provides an overview of the varied critical reception his work has provoked.