Around 1945 : literature, citizenship, rights / edited by Allan Hepburn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hepburn, Allan, author, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Literature and society.

Great Britain.

History.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Citizenship in literature.

Human rights in literature.

Law in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 313 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016.

Summary:

"Around 1945 examines an issue that preoccupied social and political thinkers at mid-century and that has resonance still: Who is a citizen and on what grounds is citizenship defined? The volume attempts to articulate some of the complexities that inform the relation between citizenship and human rights in light of a reconsideration of citizenship and rights that occurred in the postwar era. Literary texts and cultural events model problems of rights, such as dignity, freedom, sovereignty, and responsibility. The ssays are unified by an investigation of the human and cultural aspects of universal rights."-- Provided by publisher.

"The dilemmas of citizenship were especially acute right after the Second World War. Refugees and stateless people had no human rights protections because they had no national citizenship. Countries further refined the entitlements of citizens according to perceived degrees of belonging. The term "Commonwealth citizen," for instance, was first used in the British Nationality Act 1948 to designate a person with limited number of civil rights, in contradistinction to a "British citizen," who had full civil rights and liberties. At the same time, citizenship assumed international dimensions, especially after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948, which promises world citizenship for "all members of the human family." Around 1945 traces questions of citizenship and rights through literary, photographic, and cinematic examples. Novels are a particularly fertile genre for modelling the hanging obligations of citizenship because they represent conflict and change through time; novelistic plots incarnate rights through characters and events. Many of the chapters in this volume focus on novels, although others find other generic formations more amenable to the problems of citizenship, such as the notebook, the documentary, the confession, and the melodrama. These essays trace the rippling consequences of the Second World War from 1945 through the Cold War and into the present."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part 1 Citizens

1 Citizenship and the English Novel in 1945 / Marina Mackay Mackay, Marina 29

2 "A Rather Ungoverned Bringing Up": Postwar Resistance and Displacement in The World My Wilderness / Ian Whittington Whittington, Ian 48

3 Not of National Importance: Sylvia Townsend Warner, Women's Work, and the Mid-Century Historical Novel / Melanie Micir Micir, Melanie 66

4 Citizens of World Photography / Emily Hyde Hyde, Emily 84

Part 2 Violations

5 The Human and the Citizen in Joseph Conrad's: The Secret Agent / Janice Ho Ho, Janice 107

6 Interventions: Haiti, Humanitarianism, and The Girls of Slender Means / Allan Hepburn Hepburn, Allan 129

7 Torture, Text, Human Rights: Beckett's Comment c'est / How It Is and the Algerian War / Adam Piette Piette, Adam 151

8 Fictions of the Human in Postwar Japan / Claire Seiler Seiler, Claire 175

Part 3 Rights

9 Human Rights and Postwar Internationalism in The Third Man / Mitchell C. Brown Brown, Mitchell C. 197

10 Loving Revolutions: Reading Mixed Race at Mid-Century / Nadine Attewell Attewell, Nadine 216

11 Confessional Fictions: Truth and Reconciliation in the Cold War / Peter Kalliney Kalliney, Peter 240

12 Writing Like a State: On Caryl Phillips's Foreigners / Matthew Hart Hart, Matthew 262.

Notes:

"The essays in this collection derive from a two-day colloquium, entitled "Literature, Citizenship, Rights," held at McGill University on 21 22 August 2014. That event was made possible by generous support from a Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC) research grant dedicated to research on the novel."--Acknowledgments.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Around 1945

ISBN:

9780773547315

0773547312

9780773547322

0773547320

OCLC:

932386912