EDITORIAL

Abstract

welcome to the winter 2013 issue of English – whether you are a new reader or an established follower of the journal. As ever, we offer you what we hope is a thought-provoking mixture of critical articles, original poetry, and book reviews, which individually and collectively will stimulate ideas and discussion about the relationship between literary culture and the contexts in which we live. What defines a national literary culture? What are the possible partnerships, or perceived tensions, between literature and ideology? Whose literary work – or its ideological stance – influences other writers, and whose texts stand in defiant isolation of others (insofar as that is ever really possible)? How does a sense of shared literary taste develop, and to what extent are the factors that shape it public and commercial rather than private and aesthetic? These are some of the most vexed debating points among writers, readers, and critics of literature, and they frequently underlie the arguments put forward on the pages of this journal. These controversies have recently been brought to a head by the much-discussed decision of the sponsors and advisors of the Man Booker Prize to open up the competition to writers from the USA, who were not formerly eligible for the prize. Will the prize lose its distinctive identity, with writers from Britain, Ireland, and the Commonwealth being ‘overwhelmed’ by the US authors, as some cultural commentators seem to fear? To what extent is the quality of the entries, and thus the cultural capital of the award, likely to be enriched by the inclusion of this major constituent of literature in English? Will the nature of the prize – and, more significantly, the nature of the contemporary novel as defined by the prize and the tastes of its judges – change as a result of the inclusion of this new swathe of the literary landscape? These thoughts appear to be premised upon the assumption that it is feasible, and perhaps even sensible, to speak of one identifiable literary culture in nations such as Britain or the USA, a presumption that may in turn be challenged by alternative senses of the interaction of cultures and location. We can only wait and watch the new phase of the prize's history with interest – though in the meantime we may agree that literary prizes are a barometer of taste, not only for the literary genre in question but also for the wider perception of the role of literature in relation to national cultures, social and political ideologies, and the forces of the literary marketplace.