Reading the Novel in English 1950 - 2000

by Shaffer, Brian W.

• ISBN13: 9781405101134
• ISBN10: 140510113X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-30
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Written in clear, jargon-free prose, this introductory text charts the variety of novel writing in English in the second half of the twentieth century. An engaging introduction to the English-language novel from 1950-2000 (exclusive of the US). Provides students both with strategies for interpretation and with fresh readings of selected seminal texts. Maps out the most important contexts and concepts for understanding this fiction. Features readings of ten influential English-language novels including Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Author Biography

Brian W. Shaffer is Professor of English and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for Faculty Development at Rhodes College, Memphis. 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) and the editor of A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000 (Blackwell, 2005).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	viii
Preface	ix
1 Introduction: Contexts and Concepts for Reading the Novel in English 1950-2000	1	(34)
The Modernist British Novel and After: "Antimodernist" and "Postmodernist" Reactions	1	(9)
It Can Happen Here: The British Novel as a Response to the Crisis of Civilization	10	(4)
Shifting Literary—National Paradigms: From the "English Novel" to the "Novel in English"	14	(17)
A Note on the "Novel"	31	(4)
2 Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (1954)	35	(19)
3 William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954)	54	(18)
4 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958)	72	(15)
5 Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)	87	(18)
6 Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)	105	(16)
7 J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)	121	(17)
8 Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985)	138	(19)
9 Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989)	157	(18)
10 Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy (1992)	175	(20)
11 Graham Swift's Last Orders (1996)	195	(17)
Notes	212	(43)
Index	255