The British Novel in the Twenty-First Century

Cultural Concerns – Literary Developments – Model Interpretations
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-3-86821-734-6
Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier

Buch, Englisch, Band 20, 370 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 677 g

Reihe: WVT Handbücher zum literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Studium

The contemporary British novel is not only alive and kicking, it has continued to flourish by engaging with 21st-century issues, generating new forms and sub-genres, and enjoying great popularity and cultural prestige. This handbook offers an overview of some of the most important recent trends in the British novel in the 21st century and provides a provisional map of the most salient developments that are already discernible. The novels discussed in detail are situated in the broader cultural transformations, looking at how they respond to and engage with contemporary concerns. The selected authors, works, and trends provide a more or less representative overview of the broad spectrum of current themes, genres, contexts, and formal developments. This handbook pursues three main aims: First, the chapters explore key works of as many of the most influential novelists of the new millennium as possible. Second, this conceptually oriented volume tries to provide a survey of the most important developments, subgenres, themes, narrative techniques and contexts of the contemporary British novel, while being particularly geared towards the cultural concerns and contexts which the novels examined in each chapter address. Third, the chapters are designed in such a way as to offer exemplary in-depth analyses and interpretations of the novels in question, while also demonstrating various theoretical and methodological approaches in action, thus hopefully serving as model interpretations. Dealing with literary history in the making, this handbook offers an essential guide to teachers, students and readers interested in salient new departures and the multi-facetted trajectories of British novels in the 21st century.

Zielgruppe

Dealing with literary history in the making, this handbook offers an essential guide to teachers, students and readers interested in salient new departures and the multi-facetted trajectories of British novels in the 21st century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nünning, Vera

Nünning, Ansgar

Inhaltsverzeichnis

TABLE OF CONTENTS I INTRODUCTION 1. An Outline of the Objectives, Features and Challenges of the British Novel in the Twenty-First Century      3 Vera Nünning & Ansgar Nünning (Heidelberg/Gießen) 2. Cultural Concerns, Literary Developments, Critical Debates: Contextualizing the Dynamics of Generic Change and Trajectories of the British Novel in the Twenty-First Century        21 Vera Nünning & Ansgar Nünning (Heidelberg/Gießen) 3. The Booker Prize as a Harbinger of Literary Trends and an Object of Satire: Debates about Literary Prizes in Journalism and Edward St Aubyn’s Lost for Words (2014)        53 Sibylle Baumbach (Innsbruck) II CRISES, POLITICS AND WAR IN THE BRITISH NOVEL AFTER 9/11 4. Fictions of (Meta-)History: Revisioning and Rewriting History in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012)        71 Marion Gymnich (Bonn) 5. Fictions of Migration: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) and Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani (2006)        87 Birgit Neumann (Düsseldorf) 6. Fictions of Cultural Memory and Generations: Challenging Englishness in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004)        103 Jan Rupp (Heidelberg) 7. Living with the ‘War on Terror’: Fear, Loss and Insecurity in Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005) and Graham Swift’s Wish You Were Here (2011)        119 Michael C. Frank (Konstanz) 8. Fictions of Capitalism: Accounting for Global Capitalism’s Social Costs in Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost (2007), Sebastian Faulks’s A Week in December (2009) and John Lanchester’s Capital (2012)        139 Joanna Rostek (Gießen) 9. Science Novels as Assemblages of Contemporary Concerns: Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) and The Children Act (2014)        155 Alexander Scherr (Gießen) III CULTURAL CONCERNS AND IMAGINARIES IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVELS 10. Exploring Fragile Relationships in the Twenty-First Century: Love and Marriage in David Nicholls’s One Day (2009) and Mark Haddon’s The Red House (2012)        173 Christine Schwanecke (Mannheim) 11. (De)Constructing Gendered and Sexual Identities in the Twenty-First Century: Fluid Selves and Multiple Worlds in Jeanette Winterson’s The.PowerBook (2000) and Lighthousekeeping (2004)        187 Susana Onega (Zaragoza) 12. Fictions of Personal Memory: The Precarious Character of Remembering and Identity in Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans (2000), Penelope Lively’s The Photograph (2003) and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending (2011)        201 Dorothee Birke (Aarhus) 13. Fictions of Ageing, Illness and Dementia: Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother (2006) and Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing (2014)        217 Susanne Christ (Gießen) 14. The Critique of Modernization in the Contemporary Novel: Imaginaries of Community in Marina Lewycka’s The Lubetkin Legacy (2016) and Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore (2003)        231 Stella Butter (Koblenz) 15. The Condition of England Novel in the Twenty-First Century: Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) and Jonathan Coe’s Number 11, or Tales That Witness Madness (2015)        247 Caroline Lusin (Mannheim) 16. Dystopian Novels: Biopolitics and the Posthuman in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Susan Greenfield’s 2121: A Tale from the Next Century (2013)        265 Eckart Voigts (Braunschweig) IV BEYOND POSTMODERNISM: NEW FORMS OF STORYTELLING IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVELS 17. Auto/biographic Metafiction and Relational Lives: Antonia S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale (2000) and J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime (2009) as Paradigms of Meta-auto/biographies        283 Anne Rüggemeier (Freiburg) 18. Epistemological and Ontological Metafiction: Exploring the Nature of Truth and Being in Ali Smith’s The Accidental (2005) and How to be both (2014)        297 Gesa Stedman (Berlin) 19. Hybridisation and Globalisation as Catalysts of Generic Change: David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) and The Bone Clocks (2014)      311 Birgit Breidenbach (Warwick) 20. Medialization as a Catalyst of Generic Change: Exploring Fictions of the Internet in Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked (2009) and T.R. Richmond’s What She Left (2015)        327 Maria Löschnigg (Graz) 21. Multimodal Storytelling in Contemporary Fiction: Graham Rawle’s Diary of an Amateur Photographer: A Mystery (1998) and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)        343 Wolfgang Hallet (Gießen)