The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000In this introduction to post-war fiction in Britain, Dominic Head shows how the novel yields a special insight into the important areas of social and cultural history in the second half of the twentieth century. Head's study is the most exhaustive survey of post-war British fiction available. It includes chapters on the state and the novel, class and social change, gender and sexual identity, national identity and multiculturalism. Throughout Head places novels in their social and historical context. He highlights the emergence and prominence of particular genres and links these developments to the wider cultural context. He also provides provocative readings of important individual novelists, particularly those who remain staple reference points in the study of the subject. Accessible, wide-ranging and designed specifically for use on courses, this is the most current introduction to the subject available. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The State and the Novel | 13 |
The PostWar Wilderness | 14 |
The Testing of Liberal Humanism | 19 |
The Sixties and Social Revolution | 24 |
The PostConsensus Novel | 29 |
Intimations of Social Collapse | 38 |
After Thatcher | 43 |
The Possible Dance of Scottishness | 147 |
Beyond the Isles? | 154 |
Multicultural Personae | 156 |
JewishBritish Writing | 158 |
The Empire Within | 161 |
Dislocation Confronted | 164 |
The Quest for a Settlement | 170 |
Ethnic Identity and Literary Form | 172 |
Class and Social Change | 49 |
The Movement | 50 |
Anger and WorkingClass Fiction | 52 |
Education and Class Loyalty | 57 |
The Formal Challenge of Class | 63 |
The Waning of ClassConsciousness | 69 |
The Rise of the Underclass | 72 |
The Realignment of the Middle Class | 75 |
The Role of the Intellectual | 80 |
Gender and Sexual Identity | 83 |
SecondWave Feminism | 94 |
PostFeminism | 105 |
Repression in Gay Fiction | 113 |
National Identity | 118 |
Reinventing Englishness | 119 |
The Colonial Legacy | 124 |
The Troubles | 131 |
Irishness Extended | 141 |
Welsh Resistance | 144 |
Putting Down Roots | 175 |
Rushdies Broken Mirror | 179 |
Towards PostNationalism | 182 |
Country and Suburbia | 188 |
The Death of the Nature Novel | 189 |
The Reevaluation of Pastoral | 190 |
The PostPastoral Novel | 194 |
The Country in the City | 208 |
Trouble in Suburbia | 213 |
Embracing the Suburban Experience | 219 |
Beyond 2000 | 224 |
Technology and the New Science | 233 |
Towards the New Confessional | 240 |
The Fallacy of the New | 245 |
Murdoch and Morality | 251 |
Notes | 260 |
Bibliography | 283 |
299 | |
Other editions - View all
The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000 Dominic Head No preview available - 2002 |
The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000 Dominic Head No preview available - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
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