A Companion to the British and Irish Novel, 1945 - 2000

A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000 serves as an extended introduction and reference guide to the British and Irish novel between the close of World War II and the turn of the millennium.

• Covers a wide range of authors from Samuel Beckett to Salman Rushdie
• Provides readings of key novels, including Graham Greene's Heart of the Matter, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day
• Considers particular subgenres, such as the feminist novel and the postcolonial novel
• Discusses overarching cultural, political and literary trends, such as screen adaptations and the literary prize phenomenon
• Gives readers a sense of the richness and diversity of the novel during this period and of the vitality with which it continues to be discussed

Notes on Contributors ix

Preface xvi

Acknowledgments xx

PART I Contexts for the British and Irish Novel, 1945–2000 1

1 The Literary Response to the Second World War 3
Damon Marcel DeCoste

2 The ‘‘Angry’’ Decade and After 21
Dale Salwak

3 English Dystopian Satire in Context 32
M. Keith Booker

4 The Feminist Novel in the Wake of Virginia Woolf 45
Roberta Rubenstein

5 Postmodern Fiction and the Rise of Critical Theory 65
Patricia Waugh

6 The Novel and the End of Empire 83
Reed Way Dasenbrock

7 Postcolonial Novels and Theories 96
Feroza Jussawalla

8 Fictions of Belonging: National Identity and the Novel in Ireland and Scotland 112
Gerard Carruthers

9 Black British Interventions 128
John Skinner

10 The Recuperation of History in British and Irish Fiction 144
Margaret Scanlan

11 The Literary Prize Phenomenon in Context 160
James F. English

12 Novelistic Production and the Publishing Industry in Britain and Ireland 177
Claire Squires

13 The Novel and the Rise of Film and Video: Adaptation and British Cinema 194
Brian McFarlane

14 The English Heritage Industry and Other Trends in the Novel at the Millennium 210
Peter Childs

PART II Reading Individual Texts and Authors 225

15 Samuel Beckett’s Watt 227
S. E. Gontarski and Chris Ackerley

16 George Orwell’s Dystopias: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four 241
Erika Gottlieb

17 Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and Other Late Novels 254
Bernard Schweizer

18 Modernism’s Swansong: Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano 266
Patrick A. McCarthy

19 The Heart of the Matter and the Later Novels of Graham Greene 278
Cedric Watts

20 William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Other Early Novels 289
Kevin McCarron

21 Amis, Father and Son 302
Merritt Moseley

22 Dame Iris Murdoch 314
Margaret Moan Rowe

23 Academic Satire: The Campus Novel in Context 326
Kenneth Womack

24 Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet 340
Julius Rowan Raper

25 The Oxford Fantasists: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien 354
Peter J. Schakel

26 Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 367
Bryan Cheyette

27 Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook 376
Judith Kegan Gardiner

28 Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea 388
John J. Su

29 John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman 398
James Acheson

30 Angela Carter 409
Nicola Pitchford

31 Margaret Drabble 421
Margaret Moan Rowe

32 V. S. Naipaul 432
Timothy Weiss

33 Salman Rushdie 444
Nico Israel

34 The Irish Novel after Joyce 457
Donna Potts

35 Anita Brookner 469
Cheryl Alexander Malcolm

36 Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot 481
Merritt Moseley

37 Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day 493
Cynthia F. Wong

38 Ian McEwan 504
Rebecca L. Walkowitz

39 Graham Swift 515
Donald P. Kaczvinsky

40 The Scottish New Wave 526
David Goldie

41 A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance 538
Lynn Wells

42 Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy 550
Anne Whitehead

Index 561

"Esseintally two books in one, this is both a useful reference guide and a detailed introduction tot he postwar British novel." Recommended."
Choice
Brian W. Shaffer is Professor of English and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for Faculty Development at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of The Blinding Torch: Modern British Fiction and the Discourse of Civilization (1993) and Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro (1998). He is also the co-editor with Hunt Hawkins of Approaches to Teaching Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and “The Secret Sharer” (2002). A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945–2000 serves as an extended introduction and reference guide to the British and Irish novel between the close of World War II and the turn of the millennium.

The Companion embraces the full range of this rich and heterogeneous subject, covering: specific British and Irish novels and novelists ranging from Samuel Beckett to Salman Rushdie; particular subgenres such as the feminist novel and the postcolonial novel; overarching cultural, political, and literary trends such as screen adaptations and the literary prize phenomenon. All the essays are informed by current critical and theoretical debates, but are designed to be accessible to non-specialists.

The volume as a whole gives readers a sense of the vitality with which the contemporary novel continues to be discussed.