The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018 (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Cambridge University Press, 6/27/2019
EAN 9781108483414, ISBN10: 1108483410

Hardcover, 332 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English

From 1980 to the present, huge transformations have occurred in every area of British cultural life. The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 ushered in a new neoliberal era in politics and economics that dramatically reshaped the British landscape. Alongside this political shift, we have seen transformations to the public sphere caused by the arrival of the internet and of social media, and changes in the global balance of power brought about by 9/11, the emergence of China and India as superpowers, and latterly the British vote to leave the European Union. British fiction of the period is intimately interwoven with these historical shifts. This collection brings together some of the most penetrating critics of the contemporary, to explore the role that the British novel has had in shaping the cultural landscape of our time, at a moment, in the wake of the EU referendum of 2016, when the question of what it means to be British has become newly urgent.

Introduction
framing the present Peter Boxall
Part I. Overview
1. The 1980s Bridget Chalk
2. The 1990s Pieter Vermeulen
3. Post-millennial literature Leigh Wilson
Part II. New Formations
4. British writing and the limits of the human Gabriele Griffin
5. Form and fiction, 1980-the present Kevin Brazil
6. Institutions of fiction Caroline Wintersgill
Part III. Genres and Movements
7. Late modernism, postmodernism, and after Martin Eve
8. Experiment and the genre novel Caroline Edwards
9. Transgression and experimentation
the historical novel Jerome de Groot
10. Film and fiction from 1980-the present Petra Rau
Part IV. Contexts
11. The Mid Atlantics Ben Masters
12. Fiction, religion and freedom of speech, from 'the Rushdie affair' to 7/7 Stephen Morton
13. Sexual dissidence and British writing Rebecca Pohl
14. British cosmopolitanism after 1980 Patrick Deer
Conclusion
imagining the future Peter Boxall.