Reading the Novel in English 1950 - 2000

ISBN-13: 9781405101141 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 256 str.

Brian W Shaffer

Opis

• 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.

Recenzje

Shaffer provides an informative and contextualizing introduction that deals with issues of form and the shift from the English novel to the novel in English that was an important change in English literary studies over the period covered. The book is written in an accessible style that reflects its status as an introduction to the fiction of the period. The novels are well chosen, take an international focus, and provide a representative snapshot of fiction in English over the period .There is a sensitive reading of each novel that takes into account the historical and cultural contexts informing them. Taken all in all, the book is a good introduction to the period and thus achieves what it sets out to do. ( Year′s Work in English Studies, 2008)

This is a main theme to a comprehensive study of ten novels: Kingsley Amis s Luck Jim; William Golding s Lord of the Flies; Chinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart; Muriel Spark s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; Jean Rhys s Wide Sargasso Sea; J.M. Coetzee s Waiting for the Barbarians; Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid s Tale; Kazuo Ishiguro s The Remains of the Day; Patrick McCabe s The Butcher Boy; and Graham Smith s Last Orders [Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000] is an asset to anyone who teaches any of these novels. (English Literature in Transition 1880 1920)

Spis treści

Acknowledgements.

Preface.

1. Introduction: Contexts and Concepts for Reading the Novel in English, 1950–2000.

2. Kingsley Amis s Lucky Jim (1953).

3. William Golding s Lord of the Flies (1954).

4. Chinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart (1958).

5. Muriel Spark s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961).

6. Jean Rhys s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).

7. J. M. Coetzee s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980).

8. Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid s Tale (1985).

9. Kazuo Ishiguro s The Remains of the Day (1989).

10. Patrick McCabe s The Butcher Boy (1992).

11. Graham Swift s Last Orders (1996).

Index

O autorze

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).

Blurb

Written in clear, jargon–free prose, this introductory text charts the variety of English–language novel writing in the second half of the twentieth century. It focuses equally on British and Irish novelists, and on Anglophone novelists from other countries (exclusive of the US).

The text provides students both with strategies for interpretation and with fresh readings of ten influential novels. It maps out the most important contexts and concepts for understanding the fiction of the period, considering subjects such as the aftermath of literary modernism and the end of the British Empire. Novels discussed in depth include Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid s Tale, Kazuo Ishiguro s Remains of the Day and Chinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart.

The author treats the English–language novel of this period as a socially–engaged and exploratory genre, one that challenges and stretches the prevailing canons of knowledge and literary representation in its bid to depict and probe an evolving present.