Dominic Head
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066566
- eISBN:
- 9781781701027
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066566.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In this survey, Ian McEwan emerges as one of those rare writers whose works have received both popular and critical acclaim. His novels grace the bestseller lists, and he is well regarded by critics, ...
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In this survey, Ian McEwan emerges as one of those rare writers whose works have received both popular and critical acclaim. His novels grace the bestseller lists, and he is well regarded by critics, both as a stylist and as a serious thinker about the function and capacities of narrative fiction. McEwan's novels treat issues that are central to our times: politics, and the promotion of vested interests; male violence and the problem of gender relations; science and the limits of rationality; nature and ecology; love and innocence; and the quest for an ethical worldview. Yet he is also an economical stylist: McEwan's readers are called upon to attend, not just to the grand themes, but also to the precision of his spare writing. Although McEwan's later works are more overtly political, more humane, and more ostentatiously literary than the early work, this book uncovers the continuity as well as the sense of evolution through the oeuvre. It makes the case for McEwan's prominence—pre-eminence, even—in the canon of contemporary British novelists.Less
In this survey, Ian McEwan emerges as one of those rare writers whose works have received both popular and critical acclaim. His novels grace the bestseller lists, and he is well regarded by critics, both as a stylist and as a serious thinker about the function and capacities of narrative fiction. McEwan's novels treat issues that are central to our times: politics, and the promotion of vested interests; male violence and the problem of gender relations; science and the limits of rationality; nature and ecology; love and innocence; and the quest for an ethical worldview. Yet he is also an economical stylist: McEwan's readers are called upon to attend, not just to the grand themes, but also to the precision of his spare writing. Although McEwan's later works are more overtly political, more humane, and more ostentatiously literary than the early work, this book uncovers the continuity as well as the sense of evolution through the oeuvre. It makes the case for McEwan's prominence—pre-eminence, even—in the canon of contemporary British novelists.
Dominic Head
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066566
- eISBN:
- 9781781701027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066566.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This volume analyzes the works of British novelist Ian McEwan. It considers the problematic claim that McEwan is possibly the most significant of a number of writers who have resuscitated the link ...
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This volume analyzes the works of British novelist Ian McEwan. It considers the problematic claim that McEwan is possibly the most significant of a number of writers who have resuscitated the link between morality and the novel for a whole generation, in ways that befit the historical pressures of their time. Some of McEwan's works reviewed in this volume include The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers and The Child in Time.Less
This volume analyzes the works of British novelist Ian McEwan. It considers the problematic claim that McEwan is possibly the most significant of a number of writers who have resuscitated the link between morality and the novel for a whole generation, in ways that befit the historical pressures of their time. Some of McEwan's works reviewed in this volume include The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers and The Child in Time.
Ranga Rao
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199470754
- eISBN:
- 9780199087624
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199470754.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, World Literature
Narayan’s early hardships as an Indian novelist in English were aggravated by his resolve to do something different from his predecessors in south India: B. Rajam Iyer (1872–1898), A. Madhaviah ...
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Narayan’s early hardships as an Indian novelist in English were aggravated by his resolve to do something different from his predecessors in south India: B. Rajam Iyer (1872–1898), A. Madhaviah (1872–1925), and K.S. Venkataramani (1891–1951). All three were bilingual, tended to be didactic, and employed large numbers of Indianisms. By the time Narayan began writing, nationalism had taken root in India under Gandhi’s leadership, but he did not carry on his back a patriotic burden. His admiration for the British authors he had read avidly led him to aspire for their public; London had a magic literary ring for this ambitious youth in distant Mysore. With English as the sole language of his literary life, however, Narayan succeeded in yoking the provincial to the cosmopolitan without hurting his roots in family, religion, and society: keeping at bay crippling dysculturation.Less
Narayan’s early hardships as an Indian novelist in English were aggravated by his resolve to do something different from his predecessors in south India: B. Rajam Iyer (1872–1898), A. Madhaviah (1872–1925), and K.S. Venkataramani (1891–1951). All three were bilingual, tended to be didactic, and employed large numbers of Indianisms. By the time Narayan began writing, nationalism had taken root in India under Gandhi’s leadership, but he did not carry on his back a patriotic burden. His admiration for the British authors he had read avidly led him to aspire for their public; London had a magic literary ring for this ambitious youth in distant Mysore. With English as the sole language of his literary life, however, Narayan succeeded in yoking the provincial to the cosmopolitan without hurting his roots in family, religion, and society: keeping at bay crippling dysculturation.
Liam Connell
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198749394
- eISBN:
- 9780191869754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198749394.003.0023
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter offers a limited survey of the ways that British regional novelists have engaged in the processes of place-making. It examines novels from England, Scotland, and Wales. In doing so, the ...
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This chapter offers a limited survey of the ways that British regional novelists have engaged in the processes of place-making. It examines novels from England, Scotland, and Wales. In doing so, the chapter gives particular focus to the way that late twentieth-century and contemporary novelists have adapted the techniques of earlier writers in order to attend to the complex intertwining of the local and the global. To that end the chapter shows that while the contemporary regional novel continues to depict the distinguishing features of an ‘area and its people’ it does so by attending to the relations between this local distinctiveness and the wider world. By focusing on the way that these novels function as a form of place-making, this chapter also shows how such novels manage to articulate the region as a negotiation between local distinctiveness and universal homogeneity.Less
This chapter offers a limited survey of the ways that British regional novelists have engaged in the processes of place-making. It examines novels from England, Scotland, and Wales. In doing so, the chapter gives particular focus to the way that late twentieth-century and contemporary novelists have adapted the techniques of earlier writers in order to attend to the complex intertwining of the local and the global. To that end the chapter shows that while the contemporary regional novel continues to depict the distinguishing features of an ‘area and its people’ it does so by attending to the relations between this local distinctiveness and the wider world. By focusing on the way that these novels function as a form of place-making, this chapter also shows how such novels manage to articulate the region as a negotiation between local distinctiveness and universal homogeneity.
