1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910813267103321

Autore

Dix Hywel Rowland

Titolo

Postmodern fiction and the break-up of Britain / / Hywel Dix

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; New York, : Continuum, 2010

ISBN

1-4725-4272-X

1-282-52598-0

9786612525988

1-4411-1795-4

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (177 p.)

Collana

Continuum literary studies series

Disciplina

823/.91409

Soggetti

English fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Regionalism in literature

Regionalism - Great Britain

National characteristics, British, in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages [164]-167) and index

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- 1.The Novel - and Britain - in Transition -- 2. Voyages In  -- 3.The Spatial Turn -- 4.Feminist Satires of Monarchic Culture -- 5. A Borderless World -- 6. Race, Reading and Identification -- Conclusion -- Bibliography

Sommario/riassunto

This study explores how British identity has been explored and renegotiated by contemporary writers. It starts by examining the new emphasis on space and place that has emerged in recent cultural analysis, and shows how this spatial emphasis informs different literary texts. Having first analysed a series of novels that draw an implicit parallel between the end of the British Empire and the break-up of the unitary British state, the study explores how contemporary writing in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales contributes to a sense of nationhood in those places, and so contributes to the break-up of Britain symbolically. Dix argues that the break-up of Britain is not limited to political devolution in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is also an imaginary process that can be found occurring on a number of other conceptual coordinates. Feminism, class, regional identities and ethnic communities are all terrains on which different



writers carry out a fictional questioning of received notions of Britishness and so contribute in different ways to the break-up of Britain