Waugh Without End

Compiled on the occasion of Evelyn Waugh's centenary in 2003, this collection of essays shows a renewed critical interest in the author extended by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. The contributions go back to an international symposium held at La Rioja University, 15-17 May 2003. Apart from traditional debate over questions of fact and interpretation, the book contains innovative approaches to Waugh's oeuvre, some of which make use of theories of discourse and media studies and denote an increasingly sophisticated awareness of his religious, political, and social contexts. Beginning with those essays presenting overviews of Waugh's life and work, and continuing with discussions of particular books in chronological order, this volume deals with a wide variety of aspects that confirm Waugh's rising status as a major twentieth-century classic.

Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct. From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions of Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross.

'Unconditional Surrender' is a satire on the English class system. The writer takes a dig at the way the ruling class and their sense of entitlement, even when the country is in a global conflict, can plan through the bureaucracy to make their way into the far less dangerous and more comfortable theatres of war.

Arguing against the critical commonplace that Evelyn Waugh’s post-war fiction represents a decline in his powers as a writer, D. Marcel DeCoste offers detailed analyses of Waugh's major works from Brideshead Revisited to Unconditional Surrender. Rather than representing an ill-advised departure from his true calling as an iconoclastic satirist, DeCoste suggests, these novels form a cohesive, artful whole precisely as they explore the extent to which the writer’s and the Catholic’s vocations can coincide. For all their generic and stylistic diversity, these novels pursue a new, sustained exploration of Waugh’s art and faith both. As DeCoste shows, Waugh offers in his later works an under-remarked meditation on the dangers of a too-avid devotion to art in the context of modern secularism, forging in the second half of his career a literary achievement that both narrates and enacts a contrary, and Catholic, literary vocation.

This is a comprehensive and detailed encyclopedia for readers of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed novels of the twentieth century. It contains 175 entries on all aspects of the novel, covering such topics as the novel's main characters; cultural, literary, and political references; themes; organization; homosexuality; the novel's critical reception; and its film adaptions. It also pays particular attention to the importance of Catholicism in the story, discussing such subjects as sin, good and evil, divine grace, time, art, and love. A helpful list of recommended readings is included.

This biography of Evelyn Waugh focuses on the early years and influences that molded his mind and character. The work discusses the early writings of Waugh and explains how his childhood experiences were very influential in how he confronted lifes dilemmas.

This set comprises 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 voulme set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.