Postmodern fiction and the break-up of Britain Hywel Dix.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dix, Hywel Rowland, author.

Series:

Continuum literary studies.

Continuum literary studies series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English fiction.

Regionalism in literature.

Regionalism--Great Britain.

Regionalism.

National characteristics, British, in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (177 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London New York Continuum 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This study explores how British identity has been explored and renegotiated by contemporary writers. It starts by examining the new emphasis on space and place that has emerged in recent cultural analysis, and shows how this spatial emphasis informs different literary texts. Having first analysed a series of novels that draw an implicit parallel between the end of the British Empire and the break-up of the unitary British state, the study explores how contemporary writing in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales contributes to a sense of nationhood in those places, and so contributes to the break-up of Britain symbolically. Dix argues that the break-up of Britain is not limited to political devolution in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is also an imaginary process that can be found occurring on a number of other conceptual coordinates. Feminism, class, regional identities and ethnic communities are all terrains on which different writers carry out a fictional questioning of received notions of Britishness and so contribute in different ways to the break-up of Britain

Contents:

Introduction

1.The Novel - and Britain - in Transition

2. Voyages In

3.The Spatial Turn

4.Feminist Satires of Monarchic Culture

5. A Borderless World

6. Race, Reading and Identification

Conclusion

Bibliography

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [164]-167) and index

ISBN:

9786612525988

9781472542724

147254272X

9781282525986

1282525980

9781441117953

1441117954

OCLC:

609858447