British social realism in the arts since 1940
By: edited by David Tucker
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 222
ISBN-13: 9780230242456
Subjects: PERFORMING ARTS / Television / History & Criticism; Social realism; History; Social realism in the arts; PERFORMING ARTS / Film & Video / History & Criticism
Description: Social realism has been a vital element of British culture over the past seventy years. Yet it has not gained anywhere near the critical attention its impact warrants. It can be a highly responsive genre, one that confronts its contemporaneous social, economic and political contexts with visceral immediacy, while at the same time retaining a focus on the individual, the domestic and the private. This fascinating analysis of the intertwined histories and legacies of British social realism across disciplines reveals how important the changing genre has been for creative works since the Second World War, and how it resonates within contemporary contexts. With original contributions from leading scholars this collection provides chapters on film, theatre, fiction, visual art, poetry and television, that show how social realism speaks to our own times as well as of the past, and that a thoughtful and thorough reappraisal of the genre has been long overdue.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : "an anthropology of ourselves"  vs. "the incomprehensibility of the real" : making the case for British social realism / David Tucker; title: Tragedy, ethics and history in contemporary British social realist film / Paul Dave; title: Staging the contemporary : politics and practice in post-war social realist theatre / Stephen Lacey; title: Bad teeth : British social realism in fiction / Rod Mengham; title: "This  is not a metaphor" : the possibility of social realism in British poetry / Keston Sutherland; title: Re-presenting reality, recovering the social: the poetics and politics of social realism and visual art  / Gillian Whiteley; title: Small screens and big voices : televisual social realism and the popular /  Dave Rolinson.