Contemporary asylum narratives : representing refugees in the twenty-first century.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Woolley, Agnes, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--21st century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Political refugees in literature.

Refugees in literature.

Political refugees in motion pictures.

Refugees in motion pictures.

Asylum, Right of--Great Britain.

Asylum, Right of.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

x, 239 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke ; New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

Taking the turn of this century as a starting point, when new legislation around detention, deportation and dispersal began to take effect, Contemporary Asylum Narratives identifies an emerging cultural engagement with asylum seekers and refugees in twenty-first-century Britain. Through a focus on authors, playwrights and filmmakers, this study brings literary and cultural criticism to bear on asylum issues by exploring the representational politics that determine our responses to the stateless individuals whose numbers are certain to increase in line with global economic and ecological crises. Making productive links between refugee studies and narrative fiction, Contemporary Asylum Narratives challenges critical concepts related to migration such as hospitality, cosmopolitanism and globalization. In doing so, the book marks a transition from older, diasporic modes of belonging to the need for identifications that account for the increasingly precarious and contingent migrations of the contemporary era. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Hospitable Representations

Introduction to Part I 29

1 Narrator as Host in Graham Swift's The Light of Day 35

2 'Communicable Empathy': Reading Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore 49

Conclusion to Part I 67

Part II Refugees on Film

Introduction to Part II 71

3 Screening Asylum: Pawel Pawlikowski's Last Resort 75

4 States of Belonging: Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men 92

Conclusion to Part II 112

Part III Staging Asylum

Introduction to Part III 117

5 Authenticating Asylum: Kay Adshead's The Bogus Woman 123

6 Europe, History and Myth in Timberlake Wertenbaker's Credible Witness 141

Conclusion to Part III 159

Part IV Asylum in a Global Era

Introduction to Part IV 163

7 Globalization: Crisis and Celebration in Chris Cleave's The Other Hand 168

8 Cosmopolitan Representation: Kate Clanchy's Antigona and Me 185

Conclusion to Part IV 206.

ISBN:

1137299053

9781137299055

OCLC:

857967032