scholarly journals Introduction: The Spatial Imaginary in Contemporary British Literature and the Arts

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Morère
Keyword(s):  
British Literature ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Contemporary British Literature

scholarly journals KAZUO ISHIGURO. THE WRITER IN THE ‘FLOATING WORLD’

2018 ◽  
pp. 301-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Sidorova
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Nobel Prize Winner ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Contemporary British Literature ◽  
Before And After

Novels by the Nobel Prize winner in literature 2017 K. Ishiguro are analyzed chronologically, from the first novel A Pale View of Hills (1982) to the latest one The Buried Giant (2015). As the article shows, the author, who represents two cultural traditions, the Japanese and the British ones, reflects this quality in his works. The writer himself states that his works were mainly formed by the European literary tradition and, consequently, his novel The Remains of the Day has become a concentrated study of Englishness, one of the most vivid in contemporary British literature. Experimenting with traditional literary forms, Ishiguro uses the stream-of-conscience technique, elements of science fiction, fantasy, detective genres, but each of his novels is unique and is characterized by deep overtones. Some constant elements of the writer’s works are discussed: unreliable narrators, the opposition of memory and history, the special role of children and of old people in his novels, the significant role of periods before and after historic events that are omitted in his novels, and recognizable language and style – compact, reserved and precise.

scholarly journals There are some alternatives: Remembering 1980s Britain in contemporary British literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ella Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Black Swan ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contemporary British Literature ◽  
Falklands War ◽  
The Media ◽  
Specific Interests

<p>This thesis explores how the 1980s haunt contemporary British literature. Cognizant of a trend of cultural production (literary, film, television, music) interested in this period since the beginning of the twenty-first century, this thesis focuses on three historical novels by three critically acclaimed authors: Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, David Peace’s GB84 (both 2004) and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006). It reads these historical novels as memory texts conditioned both by their moment of publication (mid-2000s Britain under the premiership of Tony Blair) and the moments of the 1980s that they remember (1980s Britain under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher). These novels are oriented around different facets of the 1980s (the high-Tory world, the 1984-85 miners’ strike and the Falklands War respectively) and so, read together, offer a cumulative portrait of the decade. However, each novel is read on its own terms for its specific interests in the public aspects of the 1980s. This thesis is thus divided into three chapters, with each taking a different memory discourse or mode as its analytical approach, as invited by the particularities of the novel it examines. The Line of Beauty is read in terms of the spectral presence of heritage; GB84 in terms of occulted and occulting nostalgia; Black Swan Green in terms of the media and postcolonial melancholia.</p>

scholarly journals There are some alternatives: Remembering 1980s Britain in contemporary British literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ella Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Black Swan ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contemporary British Literature ◽  
Falklands War ◽  
The Media ◽  
Specific Interests

<p>This thesis explores how the 1980s haunt contemporary British literature. Cognizant of a trend of cultural production (literary, film, television, music) interested in this period since the beginning of the twenty-first century, this thesis focuses on three historical novels by three critically acclaimed authors: Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, David Peace’s GB84 (both 2004) and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006). It reads these historical novels as memory texts conditioned both by their moment of publication (mid-2000s Britain under the premiership of Tony Blair) and the moments of the 1980s that they remember (1980s Britain under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher). These novels are oriented around different facets of the 1980s (the high-Tory world, the 1984-85 miners’ strike and the Falklands War respectively) and so, read together, offer a cumulative portrait of the decade. However, each novel is read on its own terms for its specific interests in the public aspects of the 1980s. This thesis is thus divided into three chapters, with each taking a different memory discourse or mode as its analytical approach, as invited by the particularities of the novel it examines. The Line of Beauty is read in terms of the spectral presence of heritage; GB84 in terms of occulted and occulting nostalgia; Black Swan Green in terms of the media and postcolonial melancholia.</p>

scholarly journals THE SHORT STORY CYCLE IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE (BASED ON THE SHORT STORIES BY J. MCGREGOR)

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 628-634
Author(s):  
G.I. Lushnikova ◽  
T.Yu. Osadchaya
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Short Story Cycle ◽  
Contemporary British Literature ◽  
Story Cycle ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Short Narrative

The article is devoted to the poetics of the short story cycle - a genre of short narrative fiction, where classical traditions and experimental narrative techniques are used to explicate topical issues of contemporary British literature. Beside the fact that the stories are relatively short, they are characterized by semantic compression, gaps in meaning, “internal” psychological plot, intensity, expressive imagery, lyricism, implications. The consistency of the short story cycle is created by thematic complementarity, coherence of style and composition. The short story cycle by J. McGregor ‘That Isn’t the Sort of Thing that Happens to Someone like You’ is devoted to everyday life of English Fenland inhabitants and can be attributed to the ‘narrative of community’ genre, traditional for British literature. McGregor’s short story cycle embodies almost all modern tendencies of the genre: a wide palette of themes within the framework of topical issues; vivid psychological portraits and images; variety of narrative types and forms; suggestiveness, implications, specific usage of pronouns, stylistic devices of contrast and repetition.

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