The Edinburgh Companion To Twentieth-Century Literatures In English

This work presents an imaginatively constructed new literary history of the twentieth century. In an era suspicious of grand narratives, when consensus lies beyond reach and alternative histories proliferate, literary history has become more exciting, challenging - and problematic - than ever. The usual forced march through the decades, genres and national literatures no longer seems adequate. A reference work for the new century, the present Companion cuts across these familiar categories, focusing instead on 'hot spots' - crossroads in space and time around which the products and movements of the literary imagination can be seen to arrange themselves: Freud's Vienna and Conrad's Congo in 1899, Chicago and London in 1912, the Somme in July 1916, Dublin, London and Harlem in 1922, and so on, down to Bradford and Berlin in 1989 (the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the new digital media), Stockholm in 1993 (Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize) and September 11, 2001.Twenty-one chapters, commissioned from specialists in various subfields of twentieth-century literary studies, each target one of these seminal times and places, ranging widely around them to gather in broad swathes of culture and context. Framed by the editors' introduction and conclusion, the essays collectively offer a complex, interlocking and overlapping 'group portrait' of twentieth-century literatures in context. This is a companion with a difference, which sets a controversial new agenda for literary-historical analysis and will remain a point of reference and discussion within English Studies for years to come.

Book Details

ISBN: 9780748620111
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication Date: 05 July 2006
Format: Hardback
Language: English
Pages: 294 p.