The nouveau roman and writing in Britain after modernism / Adam Guy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guy, Adam, author.

Series:

Oxford English monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

French fiction.

French fiction--20th century--Sources.

French fiction--20th century--Translations.

French fiction--Appreciation--Great Britain.

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

English fiction.

Modernism (Literature)--Great Britain.

Modernism (Literature).

French fiction--Appreciation.

Great Britain.

English fiction--French influences.

Genre:

Translations.

Sources.

Literary criticism.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

vi, 233 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Summary:

The nouveau roman and Writing in Britain After Modernism recovers a neglected literary history. In the late 1950s, news began to arrive in Britain of a group of French writers who were remaking the form of the novel. In the work of Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Robert Pinget, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon, the hallmarks of novelistic writing-discernible characters, psychological depth, linear chronology-were discarded in favour of other aesthetic horizons. Transposed to Britain's highly polarized literary culture, the nouveau roman became a focal point for debates about the novel. For some, the nouveau roman represented an aberration, and a pernicious turn against the humanistic values that the novel embodied. For others, it provided a route out of the stultifying conventionality and conformism that had taken root in British letters. On both sides, one question persisted: given the innovations of interwar modernism, to what extent was the nouveau roman actually new?0This book begins by drawing on publishers' archives and hitherto undocumented sources from a wide range of periodicals to show how the nouveau roman was mediated to the British public. Of central importance here is the publisher Calder & Boyars, and its belief that the nouveau roman could be enjoyed by a mass public. The book then moves onto literary responses in Britain to the nouveau roman, focusing on questions of translation, realism, the end of empire, and the writing of the project. From the translations of Maria Jolas, through to the hostile responses of the circle around C. P. Snow, and onto the literary debts expressed in novels by Brian W. Aldiss, Christine Brooke-Rose, Eva Figes, B. S. Johnson, Alan Sheridan, Muriel Spark, and Denis Williams, the nouveau roman is shown to be a central concern in the postwar British literary field.

Contents:

I Circulation

1 Dissemination p. 29

2 Reception p. 64

II Impact

3 Translation and transition: Reading the nouveau roman in English p. 99

4 New Realism and 'the times at hand' p. 121

5 Robbe-Grillet in Other Worlds: Chosisme and the End of Empire p. 147

6 The 'tedium of interest': Butorian Projects p. 171.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780198850007

019885000X

OCLC:

1104047835