ENGLISH F. JAMES

A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction

Herausgeber: English, James F

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction offers an authoritative overview of contemporary British fiction in its social, political, and economic contexts. The book focuses on the fiction that has emerged since the late 1970s, roughly since the start of the Thatcher era, and the resulting transformation of such key areas of literary practice as publishing, bookselling, book reviewing, and higher education. Although the volume's original contributions range across a variety of topics - from the rise and fall of the postcolonial novel, and controversies over the celebrity author, to the changing relationship between literature and the cinema - each of the contributors attends carefully to the institutional and economic contexts of literary production, and to the contending forces that have shaped the emergent canon of contemporary British fiction. A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction will enable students to read any work from the last quarter century of British fiction with a much clearer sense of where it fits within British cultural life.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley
• Seitenzahl: 304
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Dezember 2005
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 240mm x 161mm x 21mm
• Gewicht: 613g
• ISBN-13: 9781405120005
• ISBN-10: 1405120002
• Artikelnr.: 21525640

Autorenporträt

James F. English is Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Comic Transactions: Literature, Humor, and the Politics of Community in Twentieth-Century Britain (1994) and The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value (2005).

Inhaltsangabe

Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction: British Fiction in a Global Frame 1
James F. English
The increasing importance since the 1970s of transnational markets and
circuits of exchange, and the consequent repositioning of British fiction
in "world literary space."
Part I Institutions of Commerce
1 Literary Fiction and the Book Trade 19
Richard Todd
The triangulated relation between (i) authors and agents, (ii) publishers,
and (iii) retail booksellers, and
the rise of the retailers to a position of dominance.
2 Literary Authorship and Celebrity Culture 39
James F. English and John Frow
The phenomenon of literary celebrity and its new articulation of the
authorial signature with the brand
name. Authors considered include Martin Amis, J. K. Rowling, Salman
Rushdie, Zadie Smith, and Fay Weldon.
3 Fiction and the Film Industry 58
Andrew Higson
The interaction of contemporary British literature and the cinema,
considered as both businesses and
cultures. Discusses the full range of novels adapted for the screen, with
an extended case study of the
adaptation of A. S. Byatt's Possession.
Part II Elaborations of Empire
4 Tropicalizing London: British Fiction and the Discipline of
Postcolonialism Nico Israel 83
The emergence of postcolonial theory and, subsequently, of a canon of
postcolonial novels. Discusses such theorists as Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall,
and Paul Gilroy, and the novelists Anita Desai, Hari Kunzru, Hanif
Kureishi, V. S. Naipaul, Ben Okri, and Salman Rushdie.
5 New Ethnicities, the Novel, and the Burdens of Representation 101
James Procter
The shifting relationship between race, writing, and representation from
the late 1970s to the present, with particular reference to the work of
Monica Ali, Farrukh Dhondy, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, and Zadie
Smith.
6 Devolving the Scottish Novel 121
Cairns Craig
Contemporary Scottish fiction in the context of Scottish nationalism and
the politics of devolution, with reference to the work of Janice Galloway,
Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, A. L. Kennedy, and Alan Warner.
7 Northern Irish Fiction: Provisionals and Pataphysicians 141
John Brannigan
How fiction in Northern Ireland has responded to the politics of the
interregnum since 1993, with particular attention to the work of Seamus
Deane, Glenn Patterson, Deirdre Madden, Robert McLiam Wilson, and Ciaran
Carson.
Part III Mutations of Form
8 The Historical Turn in British Fiction 167
Suzanne Keen
The rising status of historical fiction in contemporary Britain as more
self-consciously "literary" forms of the genre have emerged alongside
traditional verisimilar historical novels and women's historical romances.
Among the many authors discussed are A. S. Byatt, Bernadine Evaristo,
Hilary Mantel, Craig Raine, Salman Rushdie, and Edmund White.
9 The Woman Writer and the Continuities of Feminism 188
Patricia Waugh
The persistent concerns and contradictions in women's fiction since the
1960s, with reference to Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Helen Fielding,
Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, and Fay Weldon.
10 Queer Fiction: The Ambiguous Emergence of a Genre 209
Robert L. Caserio
The consolidation of queer fiction as a recognized and important literary
category in Britain, and the ongoing tension between this body of
literature and the politics of gay rights and gay identity. Writers
considered include Pat Barker, Neil Bartlett, Alan Hollinghurst, Jackie
Kay, Adam Mars-Jones, Colm Toibin, and Jeanette Winterson.
11 The Demise of Class Fiction 229
Dominic Head
The waning of class consciousness in British fiction as the traditional,
adversarial model of class has given way to new understandings both of
social inequity and of collective empowerment. With reference to a range of
writers, including Nell Dunn, Livi Michael, Alan Sillitoe, and Raymond
Williams.
12 What the Porter Saw: On the Academic Novel 248
Bruce Robbins
The academic novel considered as a disguised version of the upward mobility
story, with the university serving as a figure for the welfare state, the
frame in which the ambiguities of upward mobility are played out. Focuses
on the novels of Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury, A. S. Byatt, Amit
Chaudhuri, and David Lodge.
Index 267

Rezensionen

"Blackwell's new Companion to contemporary British fictionis a delight to review. It delivers on its promises to beinnovative, highly readable, lively and topical, and it warrantswholehearted endorsement as an essenital addition to any librarythat is seriously developing resources for undergraduate and taughtpostgraduate study."
Reference Reviews

"James English's companion contains a series of fresh, livelyand insightful readings of the key figures in post-war Britishfiction from Martin Amis to Zadie Smith. Its coverage of themultiple, changing contexts - from globalization and the 'newethnicities' to the rise of book groups and online retailing - inwhich that fiction is produced and consumed is generouslywide-ranging and satisfyingly informative. This is an authoritativeand approachable book." Michael Greaney, LancasterUniversity

"James English's A Concise Companion to ContemporaryBritish Fiction is a valuable addition to discussions of recentwriting. The essays collected here are wide-ranging, well-informed,and critically astute. This book will make a strong contribution toour understanding of the contemporary British novel."Andrzej Gasiorek, University of Birmingham