Contemporary British Novels Research Articles

Lire, dire, imager le monde — encore et toujours : la fin/les fins de la fiction (à propos de quelques romans britanniques contemporains)

Lire, dire, imager le monde — encore et toujours : la fin/les fins de la fiction (à propos de quelques romans britanniques contemporains)

O współczesnej powieści angielskiej na łamach „Przeglądu Polskiego” (1866–1914)

The monthly „Przegląd Polski” was published in Kraków between 1869 and1914. It promoted the views of Catholic intelligentsia and conservative writers. At the end of the 19th century it often published essays on British literature. At first the authors preferred to write about William Shakespeare; later on, however, they opted for the reviews of the then contemporary British novels. The monthly in question discussed the works of many well-known writers. These reviews were written by well-educated female aristocrats (such as Konstancja Morawska and Anna Maria Lisicka). They were particularly interested in the works devoted to ‘woman question’. Their attitude was moderately feminist. When we compare the novels reviewed by these essayists with the novels read by average female readers, it turns out that all these women preferred popular realist novels.

Envisioning a Dystopian, Post-Christian Society in P. Anderson Graham’s The Collapse of Homo Sapiens

Abstract As one of many contemporary British dystopian novels, P. Anderson Graham’s 1923 The Collapse of Homo Sapiens envisaged Britain in the twenty-second century as a devastated society that has largely reverted to a primitive, non-Christian state. However, a remnant of the surviving population has memories of the religious dimensions of national life, helping them to cope with the exigencies of their meagre existence. A modest revival of the faith of their forebears ensues, which in turn triggers a reaction against the re-assertion of Christianity by nationalistic elements that regard it as too charitable a social force to fortify their efforts to revitalise British culture in a hostile geopolitical setting. The narrative perspective of the novel is critical of the truncated state of that religion in Britain in the 1920s and how this was failing to guide and inspire peoples’ lives at that time.

Entangled peripheries: Spatial agency in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet and Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child

ABSTRACT With the increase in global mobility, notions of centre and periphery are becoming more unstable. Urban centres of colonial significance lose their importance as diasporic literature in general, and Black British literature in particular, explores liminal spatial perspectives within the diasporic experience. Two contemporary Black British novels, Jackie Kay’s Trumpet (1998) and Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child (2015), imagine British peripheries as spaces of personal and cultural significance. The periphery is analysed here as a material presence in the novels and considered as a locale that is multiple at its core. Revealing European peripheries as entangled in a complex web of historical and cultural implications, these Black British fictions shed light on peripheral spaces from a non-dominant European perspective and demonstrate a shift in understanding the periphery not only as an opposition to the centre, but as a locus for the negotiation of postcolonial life in Britain.

HISTORICAL MEASURES AND PHILOSOPHICAL FEATURES OF BRITISH POST-POSTOMODERNISM: OUTLINING THE CONCEPT OF «CONNECTEDNESS»

In the paper, the author states that in the UK the emergence of theoretical compendia that represent and simultaneously revise the literary landscape of this country (as well as the United States), determines the necessity to outline the boundaries of the period, which in these works is defined as post-postmodernism. The latter concept has no clear theoretical explication and is discussed in the form of literary directions (altermodernism, digimodernism, metamodernism) that define new aesthetic and philosophical grounds that differ from postmodernism. In the paper, the author substantiates the historical boundaries of post-postmodernism, in particular emphasizing the factors that led to the formation of a new literary paradigm after 2000s. The ideas of British theorists on «realisms» in contemporary British literature have been developed with the emphasis on the presentation of new worldview models and identities in the contemporary British novels. A review of «The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction» (edited by D. O’Gorman and R. Eaglestone) is represented, which gives a condensed view of the aesthetic and philosophical pursuits of the contemporary British novel. The transformation of the archetype of Home in the paradigm of the contemporary (postpostmodern) novel has been spotlighted. Attention is drawn to explaining the representation of «one’s own» and «another’s» («alien») concepts, which reconstructs the traditional idea of Home as a space of protection and security. The transcultural processes inherent in the British novel have been discussed. The new character of the worldview (based on the materials of the novels by D. Mitchell and M. Haddon) has been outlined, which gives reason to speak abouta special postpostmodern way of observing the reality and provide its interpretations. The outline of the corpus of epistemological problems in the contemporary British novel actualizes the experience of philosophy of I. Kant, which is emphasized primarily by British theorists, referring in their own interpretative models to this tradition of German classical philosophy, which becomes important for the post-postmodern novels since 2000s.

The Mysterious Talent

The article studies giftedness and talent representation in contemporary British literature by means of analysing three novels: “When We Were Orphans” by Kazuo Ishiguro, “The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield and “Milton in America” by Peter Ackroyd. The topic of giftedness appears in these works as part of the genre and form game, which is an important immanent property of postmodern literature. The plots and themes are reconsidered and played with like a set of toy building blocks used to construct a new building that makes sense only in the context of the already existing constructions. The paper shows that the concept of giftedness appears in contemporary British novels mainly as part of a game of parody, which reflects the idea of the world as imagery and confusion.

‘Italianness’ in English-language novels: intratextual translation as a representational tool

ABSTRACT A contemporary writer choosing to set a narrative in a different country might find themselves desirous to represent multilingualism (or ‘heterolingualism’, the term preferred by Rainier Grutman) on the page. Bringing a different language into the main language of the text, however, can be a complicated process. Using terminology introduced by Meir Sternberg in 1981, this article looks at three examples of contemporary British novels set partly in Italy: Virginia Baily’s Early One Morning, Adam Foulds’s In the Wolf’s Mouth and Penelope Fitzgerald’s Innocence. Particular attention will be paid to the different ways in which the narratives integrate Italian language into their English text, and to the different purposes served by intratextual translation strategies, before pointing out some of the limits of intratextual translation as a representational tool.

Традиції скептицизму й дискурс постправди в британських постпостмодерністських романах

In the paper, the forms of critical perception of reality inherent to the protagonists of contemporary British novels (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”, “Carry Me Down”, “Little Stranger”, etc.) have been discussed. The author has analyzed strategies for reactivation of skepticism in British post-postmodern novel “Cloud Atlas” by D. Mitchell. The specificity of the representation of skepticism in literary post-postmodernism is investigated; in particular, theoretical considerations of L. Miroshnychenko, O. Boynitska and other experts in English/British literature have been developed. The peculiarities of dystopia as a part of the metageneric phenomenon of post-postmodernistic novel “Cloud Atlas” have been revealed. The features of representation of propositional and existential truths in contemporary British novel are outlined. The mechanisms of counteraction to the forms of post-truth and the simulacrum “truths” represented in “Cloud Atlas” as part of capitalist ideological discourse, which leads to a distorted perception of reality and civilization catastrophe, have been outlined. It is revealed that in “Cloud Atlas” there is a critique of hypertrophied consumerism and the loss by contemporary literature the ability to be the source of existential meanings. The specific features in human representation as a dual phenomenon in post-postmodern British novel (Nietzsche's conception of the revaluation of values and the will to power in “Cloud Atlas” is depicted ambivalently) has been explored in the paper. I state that post-postmodernism is a cultural paradigm that unites aesthetic and philosophy of modernism and postmodernism. Besides, the post-postmodern novel has a specific feature resulted in a special narrative mode that combines scientific discoveries that influence the narrative with a special philosophical realm. In the paper, David Mitchell’s novel “Cloud Atlas” has been discussed as an example of post-postmodern writing that reveals emotional sincerity and skepticism, utopic way of thinking and anticolonial discourse. The novel exploits epic beginning to involve the reader in a special atmosphere created by the omnipotent narrator. The end of the story is a metaphorical return to the beginning; however, the starting point was changed. The novel exploits six separate stories that are interlinked according to the idea of eternal returning presented by Nietzsche and realized in the novel in the image of “Cloud Atlas” (symphony). The reality in the novel is exploited as a multifaceted phenomenon and time is depicted according to super-string astrophysical theory. The research gives a clue to understanding the philosophical boarders of post-postmodernism and demonstrates the combination of different discourses (humanitarian and scientific) in contemporary British novel. The paper provides new findings in explaining philosophical parameters of post-postmodern novels.

PECULIARITIES OF POST-POSTOMODERN PSYCHOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVEL

In the paper, I explore the strategies of the “resurrection of the subject” in the discourse of English post-postmodern novel. It has been emphasized the essential role of psychology in contemporary British novels. This paper reports the results of the investigation about the nature of the interaction of characters with the society, artistic revision of socio-political problems, etc. has been revealed. The peculiarities of the outlook of characters endowed with exceptional features (presence of Asperger’s syndrome, inability to hear untruth, etc.) have been discussed. It is emphasized that the worldview of post-postmodern characters is determined by genetic and physiological features, which makes it possible to perceive the reality as objectively as possible, discarded and analytically. At the same time, characters find strategies for post-postmodern humanism, which is fundamentally different from the humanistic traditions of the twentieth century. Post-postmodern narrative reacts to the idea of the Nietzsche’s philosophy of the plurality of truth. In the post-postmodern novels, the idea of plurality of truth is not denied but along with these truths there is an attempt to reach an ontological Truth, which is not currently given in senses and knowledge, since mankind has not reached a certain state of its own development. This idea is especially presented in David Mitchell’s novel “Cloud Atlas.” The main idea of the paper is that the hypothetical presence of Truth actualizes the motive of the ontological knowledge search, the need to understand the world at a qualitatively different level than humanity is experiencing here and now. Ontological forms of cognition of Truth in novels may be music (the ability to create musical masterpieces that appear as a form of the proclamation of the Truth), mathematics (as a perfect language, devoid of the disadvantages of metaphorical according to which the narrowing of the picture of the world occurs). Besides, the autistic mind of the post-postmodern protagonist of the novel “The Curious Incident…” seeks to know the surrounding reality as a system in which it is possible to establish regularities between its various fragments. All this determines the multidimensionality of the discourse of the “resurrection of the subject” in the contemporary British novels. The English post-postmodern novels represent a break with the postmodern tradition of novelistic characters. However, bringing the narrative closer to the actual broadcast of people with autism, writers currently do not have tools to depict deep psychological experiences in the inner world of characters. The autistic consciousness of post-postmodern characters resembles the phenomenon of “black box” or a computer whose internal processes remain incomprehensible to an outside user.

POSTMODERNISM VS POST-POSTMODERNISM: PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTIONS (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVEL)

In the paper, I spotlight the question about the determining the post-postmodern component in the novels that represent the contemporary literary process of the UK. The methodological conflicts that appear during the study of the contemporary literary process in the aspect of the attempts of literary scholars to extrapolate the key phenomena of postmodernism to the literature that has replaced this cultural and historical period is emphasized. It is determined that at the present stage of the functioning of literature it is expedient to outline first of all the changes concerning philosophical parameters of the novel; characteristics of post-postmodernism should be found not in the poetics but in the worldview of the protagonists by analyzing the motive and thematic units represented in the novels after 2000. The stylistic specificity of the post-postmodern novel determined by the intention of the characters to reach the level of comprehension of reality from rational positions, which makes possible the search for truth in the transcendental meanings, is emphasized. The emphasis relates to the semantic paradigm of the British post- postmodern novel. The strategies of positivistic thinking in the contemporary British novels, whose characters reveal a scientific approach to the perception of reality, their body, identity, thinking, etc., are determined. The principles of constructing a post-postmodern narrative are formed by spotlighting factual material (diary, encyclopedic records, notes, memoirs, etc.) oriented to intensify the search for characters in the plane of meaning and not only for the purpose of the postmodern game. The discussion with I. Kropyvko about the inappropriateness of considering the contemporary literary process in the categories of postmodernism was introduced. The newest philosophical studies («The Routledge companion to twenty-first century literary fiction», A. Pavlov’s dissertation) are outlined, in which an attempt was made to systematize different directions determining the epistemological basis of post-postmodernism. The necessity of the contemporary theory of literature to define the literary phenomena after the year 2000 in the categories of postmodernist paradigm has been explained. Keywords: post-postmodernism, postmodernism, contemporary British novel, naturalism, problem-thematic units of post-postmodernism, paradigm of meaning.

Unsettling postscripts and epilogues in A. S. Byatt’s Possession and Ian McEwan’s Atonement

This paper proposes to look at two contemporary British novels that, contrary to traditional practice, use their final pages to unsettle the conclusion reached earlier, and leave the reader in a state of uncertainty. Both A. S. Byatt’s Possession, a Romance (1990) and Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) play games with their readers when, rather than being part of a deflating and decelerating process of conclusion, the closing pages prolong and encourage rather than put an end to “retroactive reading” and “retrospective patterning”. Indeed, the last textual sections of each novel point to discrepancies or indeed constitute disjunctures themselves. In order to fully appreciate the means and effects of the dissonance established by the final textual section of these novels, this paper first looks at postscripts and epilogues as unlikely places for disruption before considering how the final dissonance affects the sense of poetic justice previously reached. Finally, the paper examines how this last-minute reversal (or confirmation) of poetic justice is linked to the powerful figure of the storyteller.

Exposures: Humour and Vulnerability in some Contemporary British Novels

Certains des romans les plus hilarants publies au cours des dernieres decennies commencent dans la gravite ou accueillent des moments de punctum particulierement efficaces. Cet article s’interesse a la capacite que possede l’humour d’inverser la logique du soulagement comique pour generer une intensification pathetique. En prenant des exemples tires des œuvres d’Amis, de Barnes, de Winterson, de Coe et de Lodge, il analyse la paradoxale obliteration de la distance generalement associee a l’humour, lorsque le rire devient l’instrument du pathetique, dans des moments d’exposition textuelle. L’article demontre par ailleurs comment l’humour, lorsqu’il est utilise comme strategie protectrice, est par definition un indice de la vulnerabilite du personnage, du narrateur, mais aussi de l’auteur, dans la mesure ou il a pour vocation de mettre au jour, indirectement, selon la logique de la metalepse, une faille precedemment cachee. Un cran plus loin, cet article montre combien l’humour favorise l’emergence de l’alterite dans la mesure ou, en menageant une distance entre le sujet et l’autre, il fait apparaitre ce dernier dans toute sa singularite, loin de toute identification ou totalisation. Dans tous ces cas, et par opposition a la satire, l’humour collabore avec les affects positifs et devient un operateur de vulnerabilite qui ne parvient jamais a cacher la blessure d’ou il emerge.

“We will call the damsel, and enquire at her mouth”. Re-writing Biblical Women in Contemporary British Novels

In this paper I focus on four contemporary British novels which re-write parts of the Bible [Jenny Diski’s Only Human: A Comedy (2000) and her After These Things: A Novel (2004); Michele Roberts’s The Wild Girl (1984) and The Book of Mrs Noah (1987)] and examine the way those novels deal with the androcentric (male-centred) character of biblical narratives. Drawing on the taxonomy proposed by Elizabeth Shussler Fiorenza, I argue that Diski’s and Roberts’s re-writings engage in a complex and subtle relationship with the Bible, in the course of which they do much more than merely trying to reverse or undo biblical patriarchalism and androcentrism. I explain and give examples of how the four novels rely on strategies similar to Fiorenza’s types of feminist hermeneutics (the hermeneutics of suspicion, the hermeneutics of remembrance, and the hermeneutics of imagination). To account for the nuanced selfconsciousness of Diski’s and Roberts’s novels, I introduce the concept of the hermeneutics of weakening, which –emerging from Gianni Vattimo’s il pensiero debole– is meant to conceptualise the enfeebled mode of truth. I see as established by the two woman writers.

The “Novel of Recollections” – Narration as a Means of Coming to Terms with the Past

Among the large body of contemporary British novels dealing with the past, one specific genre can be identified, and called, the “novel of recollections” as it revolves around its first person narrator’s coming to terms with the often traumatic memories of his or her past life. This article focuses on this genre and its characteristic features, both formal and concerning the content, in John Banville’s The Sea (2005), Anne Enright’s The Gathering (2007) and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending (2011). Using the example of Graham Swift’s Tomorrow (2007), this article also shows that these features alone may not necessarily guarantee the text’s positive reception, suggests the main reasons why Swift’s novel failed with most readers and critics, and contemplates the novel of recollections’ future course and development.

Skaz Rulz: (Re-)Oralisation of Contemporary British Fiction

Taking as its starting point the Russian Formalist concept of skaz, this paper discusses a number of contemporary British novels in which the illusion of spontaneous speech is created. It analyses basic textual signals of the skaz the narrator’s idiosyncratic style, frequent addresses to the “you” of the addressee and a highly digressive narrative structure. The skaz mode proves to be a narrative strategy which cannot be associated with a particular literary convention its popularity should rather be related to the tendencies in contemporary culture indicative of its general re-oralisation.

When the Novel Meets the Bible. The Flood in Four Contemporary British Novels

L’article se concentre sur quatre romans modernes britaniques où sont réécrits des récits de la Bible sur Noé, l’Arche et le déluge: A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters par Julian Barnes, Boating for Beginners par Jeanette Winterson, The Book of Mrs Noah par Michele Roberts et Not the End of the World par Géraldine McCaughrean. Nous nous proposons d’examiner la question du secret à la lumière des arguments de Derrida. Cet angle d’approche nous amène (1) à caractériser la relation entre la fiction moderne et la Bible, (2) à projeter un éclairage nouveau sur la passion dans le récit du déluge, et (3) à montrer comment ces éléments détruisent le postulat de Derrida quant à la symétrie sécularisée entre les Ecritures et la littérature.

Terror and the Sublime: Two Post-1989 British Novels about East-Central Europe

Since ancient times well into our postmodern era, aesthetic treatments have regarded the experience of mediated terror a source of the sublime. However, this traditional association of the two notions suffered a severe cataclasm during the violent tragedies of the twentieth century, and it became questionable whether such terror as that of a totalitarian state could trigger sublime at all. The aim of this essay is to outline how the traditional coupling of terror and the sublime is transformed in contemporary literary evaluations of socialist state terror based on two contemporary British novels about East-Central Europe : Paul Bailey: Kitty and Virgil, and Rose Tremain: The Road Home.

A Bruise upon a Bruise: Forms and Traces of Violence in Graham Swift’s 'Out of This World' and 'Waterland'

While lacking the physical explicitness of other contemporary British novels, Graham Swift’s texts are at least of equal interest in terms of the attention paid to the numerous face(t)s of violence, as well as to the deep if not always detectable marks imprinted on the victims. The centrality of the terrorist bomb attack to the plot of Out of This World singles out Swift’s fourth novel for special attention as regards the idea of violence and even a superficial reading yields ample material, from the historical background of war and the detailed presentation of major campaigns of the twentieth century to the personal history of its protagonists. This paper aims to trace the different reactions to and manifestations of violence across three generations, then focus on the frequent philosophical disquisitions on the main topic of the text, before moving on to Waterland and its intricate palimpsest of bruises upon bruises, hissing guillotines, revenge, murder, suicide, madness and guilt.

Struggling with the Rhetoric of Exemption: Figurations of the Holocaust in Contemporary British Novels

It is certainly not an established convention to speak of ‘the British Holocaust novel’. Indeed, many would see such a label as a contradiction in terms. Within the last two decades, however, a surprising number of British novels have dealt with the Holocaust. This article reads a fairly wide selection of such novels, arguing that they represent attempts to overcome a deeply entrenched tension in the British discourse of remembrance: the tension between a definitive national tradition of continually re-presenting the Second World War on the one hand, and the firmly established exemption of Britain from involvement in the Holocaust on the other. Analysing different fictional strategies for translating the Holocaust into British ‘memory culture’, the essay traces a development that leads from gestures of substitution to gestures of investigation, that is, from a literary practice of de-realisation and counter-historical spatial extension of the Holocaust towards literary endeavours of discovering traces of the Holocaust even in the Britain of today.

Hybrid Narration and Hybrid Identities in Contemporary British Novels

Hybrid Narration and Hybrid Identities in Contemporary British Novels