Description
Book SynopsisEssays discussing the concept of globalisation as present in works of art and literature. Like Freud's `civilisation', globalisation is both cause and consequence of its own discontents, visible at times only in the resistances it generates. Study of the phenomenon has until recently been confined largely to economists and political and social scientists. The present volume brings a range of literary and cultural analyses to bear to demonstrate both its actual time-depth and the all-encompassing nature of its influences on culture and consciousness. The English language and English literature have been major elements in its forging, underwriting first British and then American cultural hegemony. Unlike most readings of globalisation, these essays depict notan irresistible juggernaut but a process that, in generating its own resistances, opens up the possibility of an alternative world order founded not on the inequities of power and capital, but on shared commitment to a fragile planet and a common and universal culture. Ranging from Homer to Michael Crichton, Shakespeare to Suleyman Al-Bassam, John Donne to Les Murray, John Keats to Derek Walcott, Conrad, Gissing and Edward Lear to V. S. Naipauland Salman Rushdie, and addressing, among many others, writers as diverse as Paul Valéry and Edouard Glissant, Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens, George Orwell, Martha Gellhorn and Storm Jameson, Eliot, Yeats and Auden, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon, these essays explore a remarkable range of responses to the process of globalisation from earliest times to the present day. Contributors: STAN SMITH, GRAHAM HOLDERNESS, BRYAN LOUGHREY, JENNIFER BIRKETT, PHYLLIS LASSNER, SHARON OUDITT, TONY SHARPE, EDWARD LARRISSY, MICHAEL MURPHY, LIAM CONNELL
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Globalisation and its Discontents - Stan Smith Arabesque: Shakespeare and Globalisation - Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey [En] Countering Globalisation: Resistances in the System - Jennifer Birkett Double Trouble: George Orwell, Martha Gellhorn and the War to End Global Imperialism - Phyllis Lassner Lost Worlds: Southern Italy and the Resistance to Globalisation - Sharon Ouditt The Planet on the Table: Some Modernist Perspectives on Globalisation - Tony Sharpe Irish Writing and Globalisation - Edward Larrissy Local Habitations, Global Names: Les Murray and the Poetry Superleague - Michael Murphy Business as Usual: The Image of the Corporation in the Cultures of Globalisation - Liam Connell Epic Logos: On Last Looking into Several Homers - Stan Smith
