Description
Book SynopsisThe writing of this period offers fresh insight into cultural reconstruction and the difficulty of writing about cataclysmic events. Through a historical approach that re-instates forgotten writers and re-evaluates well-known names, readers will see the period anew. This book will be a key resource for scholars of twentieth-century British literature.
Table of ContentsIntroduction Gill Plain; Part I. Aftermath: The Beginning or the End?: Introduction; 1. Slender means: the novel in the age of austerity Marina MacKay; 2. Impossible elegies: poetry in transition 1940–1960 Nigel Alderman; 3. Democracy and decentralisation: the Renaissance of British theatre? Rebecca D'Monté; 4. National transitions: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland Katie Gramich; 5. Heroes of austerity: genre in transition Gill Plain; 6. Wireless writing, World War II and the West Indian literary imagination James Procter; Part II. The Politics of Transition: Introduction; 7. Narrating transitions to peace: fiction and film after war Mark Rawlinson; 8. Poetry, the early Cold War and the idea of Europe Adam Piette; 9. Horizon, encounter and mid-century geopolitics Thomas S. Davis; 10. Public intellectuals and the politics of literature: the causes and collaborations of J. B. Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes Priestley Ina Habermann; 11. Prizing the nation: postwar children's fiction Lucy Pearson; 12. Artists of their time: the postwar battle for realism in literature and painting Alice Ferrebe; Part III. Reconfigurations: Introduction; 13. Demob: the postwar origins of the new nature writing Leo Mellor; 14. Old haunts: childhood and home in postwar fiction Victoria Stewart; 15. New uses of literacy: the blank page and writing in the aftermath of war Tracy Hargreaves; 16. The pursuit of love: writing postwar desire Charlotte Charteris; 17. Creating vital theatre: new voices in a time of transition Claire Cochrane; Part IV. No Directions: Introduction; 18. Covert legacies in postwar British fiction James Smith; 19. 'The sights are worse than the journeys': travel writing at the mid-century Petra Rau; 20. The future and the end: imagining catastrophe in mid-century British fiction Allan Hepburn; 21. Exhausted literature: the postwar novel in repose Kate McLoughlin.
