POSTWAR BRITISH FICTION Dr Patten HT 2012 (SEMESTER LONG) epatten@tcd.ie
This option is a survey of British fiction and its social context from the Second
World War to 1970. We shall explore a number of themes including the war and its legacy; concepts of Englishness; social class and the ‘angry young man’ generation; responses to the Cold War; the position of women and changing gender relations; education, political culture and class. The course will also document relevant critical issues, including: British realism versus continental experimentalism; the influence of the nouveau roman , the British philosophical novel; links to the Movement; neo-Victorianism and condition-of-England fiction.
Hilary term:
Week 1: Introduction: “The novel at the crossroads”
Week 2: The war as watershed: Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Week 3: Virtue and damnation: Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter (1948)
Week 4: Myths of Englishness: Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1953)
Week 5: The postwar social and cultural context: handout texts
Week 6: The Uses of Literacy: Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim (1954)
Week 7: Study week
Week 8: Angry Young Men: John Braine, Room at the Top (1957)
Week 9: Angry Young Women? Margaret Drabble, The Millstone (1965)
Week 10: Postwar parables: Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
Week 11: Europeanism?: John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)
Week 12: Conclusions
Preliminary Bibliography:
Acheson, James the British and Irish Novel since 1960 (1991)
Bergonzi, Bernard The Situation of the Novel (1979)
Bradbury, Malcolm (ed), The Novel Today (1977)
Connor, Stephen The English Novel in History 1950-1995 (1996)
Gasiorek, Andrzej Postwar British Fiction: Realism and After (1995)
Hewison, Robert Culture and Consensus: England, Art, Politi cs… (1995)
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In Anger: Culture and Cold War (1981)
Head, Dominic Modern British Fiction 1950-2000 (2002)
Lodge, David The Novelist at the Crossroads (1971)
Marwick, Arthur Culture in Britain since 1945 (1991)
Sinfield, Alan Literature Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (1989)
Sked, Alan Postwar Britain: a Political History (1990)
Taylor, D.J. After the War: The Novel and England since 1945 (1994)
Waugh, Patricia Harvest of the Sixties: English Literature 1960-1990 (1995)