Figures of catastrophe
Subtitle: the condition of culture novel
By: Francis Mulhern
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Brooklyn, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 165
ISBN-13: 9781784781910
Subjects: Working class in literature; History; Literature and society; English fiction; History and criticism; PHILOSOPHY / Political; Labor movement in literature
Description: "The leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the English novel and demonstrates its intimate, formative association with the course of the British labor movement, from its rise in the early twentieth century to the years of decline from the 1980s onwards. In this striking reconstruction, culture emerges as a stake in social conflict, above all that of classes; the narrative evaluations of culture's ends--the aspirations and destinies of those whose lives are the matter of its fictions--grow steadily darker as time passes. Readings of classic and contemporary novelists from Hardy and Forster to Amis, Kureishi and Smith, among others, illuminate the forms and narrative logics of the genre that Mulhern terms the "condition of culture novel," and places it in international context"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.