Chapter 5
- How have social changes in Britain since 1950 been reflected in English literature?
- What effects has the end of empire had on English literature?
- Taking the example of another country, how do the themes and style of its literature differ from those of English literature? Think about women’s writing, migrants’ stories and writing with a strong regional flavour.
- Most people in Britain live in suburban areas of towns and cities. What sort of image does suburban life have? Refer back to the extracts in the text from Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch.How do the authors feel about living in suburbia? Why do you think they feel that way?
- Imagine you are a book critic for a popular magazine. Write a critical review of a novel that you know well, explaining what you like or dislike about it.
- With reference to English literature, discuss the view that in the 1950s men and women had a clear vision of what a man and woman was, but today this clarity of vision has largely disappeared.
- Discuss the treatment of one of the following in the work of any writer(s) you are familiar with: urban life, rural life, gender identity, the loss of empire, ethnic identity.
- What do authors tell us about the modern world that historians and social scientists do not?
- How do you think digital media are changing our reading patterns and study of literature?
- Compare and contrast the work of a British author with one from another country.
Books
Bradbury, M. (2001) The Modern British Novel, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Breen, J. (1990) In Her Own Write: Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction, London: Macmillan.
Brown, I. et al. (2007) The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Cairns, C. (1989) The History of Scottish Literature, vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, Edinburgh: Mercat.
Carter, R. and McRae, J. (2001) The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland, London and New York: Routledge.
Christianson, A. and Lumsden, A. (2000) Contemporary Scottish Women Writers Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Cockin, K. (2009) The Post-War British Literature Handbook London:Continuum
Connor, S. (1996) The English Novel in History, London and New York: Routledge.
Dabydeen, D. (ed.) (1985) The Black Presence in English Literature, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
King, B. (2004) The Oxford English Literary History Series, vol. 13, 1948–2000: The Internationalization of English Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Munt, S.M. (1994) Murder by the Book: Feminism and the Crime Novel, London: Routledge.
Morrison, B., Motion, A. (1986) The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry London: Penguin
Reynolds, K. (2011) Children’s Literature; a Very Short Introduction Oxford: OUP
Sanders, A. (2004) The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Stevenson, R. (2004) The Oxford English Literary History Series, vol. 12, 1960–2000: The Last of England? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thieme, J. (ed.) (1996) Post-Colonial Literatures in English, London: Arnold.
Tucker, D. (2011) British Social Realism in the Arts Since 1940 Palgrave: London
Wallace, G. and Stevenson, R. (eds.) (1993) The Scottish Novel since the Seventies: New Visions, Old Dreams, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Waugh, P. (1995) Harvest of the Sixties: English Literature and its Background 1960–90, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Waugh, P. (2016) A History of British Fiction: 1945-present. Oxford: Blackwell.
Journals
Granta, the Literary Review, the London Magazine, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement all carry up-to-date information, news and comment on current developments. The British Council has a regular newsletter Literature Matters, which includes recent information on academic conferences, publications and so on, as well as analysis of the latest trends in English literature. A wide range of more academic journals exists. For more information, see http://humanitiesjournals.wikia.com/wiki/English_Literature_Journals
V.S. Naipaul interview (2011)
Doris Lessing interview (2007)
J.K. Rowling interviewed by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid (2014)
P.D. James interview (2013)
P.D. James discusses her main protagonists Inspector Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray (2010)
Hanif Kureishi interview (2011)
Jeanette Winterson interview (2014)
Salman Rushdie interview (2013)
Interviews by Australian writer Clive James with Ian McEwan, Nick Hornby, Julian Barnes, Tom Stoppard and others, in his series Talking in the Library.
http://www.clivejames.com/video/library/1
Seamus Heaney interview (2008)
Benjamin Zephaniah interview
Performance by Zephaniah and his students of his poem ‘The British’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq13dvtZjP4&spfreload=10
John Cooper Clarke performs ‘Health Fanatic’
Ted Hughes reads his poem ‘Crow’