A Companion to the British and Irish Novel, 1945 - 2000

by Shaffer, Brian W.

• ISBN13: 9781405113755
• ISBN10: 1405113758
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-27
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000 serves as an extended introduction and reference guide to the British and Irish novel between the close of World War II and the turn of the millennium. The Companion embraces the full range of this rich and heterogeneous subject, covering: specific British and Irish novels and novelists ranging from Samuel Beckett to Salman Rushdie; particular subgenres such as the feminist novel and the postcolonial novel; overarching cultural, political, and literary trends such as screen adaptations and the literary prize phenomenon. All the essays are informed by current critical and theoretical debates, but are designed to be accessible to non-specialists. The volume as a whole gives readers a sense of the vitality with which the contemporary novel continues to be discussed.

Author Biography

Brian W. Shaffer is Professor of English and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for Faculty Development at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of The Blinding Torch: Modern British Fiction and the Discourse of Civilization (1993) and Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro (1998). He is also the co-editor with Hunt Hawkins of Approaches to Teaching Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and “The Secret Sharer” (2002).

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	ix
Preface	xvi
Acknowledgments	xx
PART I Contexts for the British and Irish Novel, 1945-2000	1	(224)
1 The Literary Response to the Second World War	3	(18)
Damon Marcel DeCoste
2 The "Angry" Decade and After	21	(11)
Dale Salwak
3 English Dystopian Satire in Context	32	(13)
M. Keith Booker
4 The Feminist Novel in the Wake of Virginia Woolf	45	(20)
Roberta Rubenstein
5 Postmodern Fiction and the Rise of Critical Theory	65	(18)
Patricia Waugh
6 The Novel and the End of Empire	83	(13)
Reed Iray Dasenbrock
7 Postcolonial Novels and Theories	96	(16)
Feroza Jussawalla
8 Fictions of Belonging: National Identity and the Novel in Ireland and Scotland	112	(16)
Gerard Carruthers
9 Black British Interventions	128	(16)
John Skinner
10 The Recuperation of History in British and Irish Fiction	144	(16)
Margaret Scanlan
11 The Literary Prize Phenomenon in Context	160	(17)
James F. English
12 Novelistic Production and the Publishing Industry in Britain and Ireland	177	(17)
Claire Squires
13 The Novel and the Rise of Film and Video: Adaptation and British Cinema	194	(16)
Brian McFarlane
14 The English Heritage Industry and Other Trends in the Novel at the Millennium	210	(15)
Peter Childs
PART II Reading Individual Texts and Authors	225	(336)
15 Samuel Beckett's Watt	227	(14)
S.E. Gontarski and Chris Ackerley
16 George Orwell's Dystopias: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four	241	(13)
Erika Gottlieb
17 Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Other Late Novels	254	(12)
Bernard Schweizer
18 Modernism's Swansong: Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano	266	(12)
Patrick A. McCarthy
19 The Heart of the Matter and the Later Novels of Graham Greene	278	(11)
Cedric Watts
20 William Golding's Lord of the Flies and Other Early Novels	289	(13)
Kevin McCarron
21 Amis, Father and Son	302	(12)
Merritt Moseley
22 Dame Iris Murdoch	314	(12)
Margaret Moan Rowe
23 Academic Satire: The Campus Novel in Context	326	(14)
Kenneth Womack
24 Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet	340	(14)
Julius Rowan Raper
25 The Oxford Fantasists: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien	354	(13)
Peter J. Schakel
26 Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie	367	(9)
Bryan Cheyette
27 Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook	376	(12)
Judith Kegan Gardiner
28 Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea	388	(10)
John J. Su
29 John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman	398	(11)
James Acheson
30 Angela Carter	409	(12)
Nicola Pitchford
31 Margaret Drabble	421	(11)
Margaret Moan Rowe
32 V.S. Naipaul	432	(12)
Timothy Weiss
33 Salman Rushdie	444	(13)
Nico Israel
34 The Irish Novel after Joyce	457	(12)
Donna Potts
35 Anita Brookner	469	(12)
Cheryl Alexander Malcolm
36 Julian Barnes's Flauberts Parrot	481	(12)
Merritt Moseley
37 Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day	493	(11)
Cynthia F. Wong
38 Ian McEwan	504	(11)
Rebecca L. Walkowitz
39 Graham Swift	515	(11)
Donald P. Kaczrinsky
40 The Scottish New Wave	526	(12)
David Goldie
41 A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance	538	(12)
Lynn Wells
42 Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy	550	(11)
Anne Whitehead
Index	561