York Notes Companions: Postwar Literature:1950 to 1990

Description

Features

• Analysis of key texts and debates
• Extended commentaries provide further in-depth analysis of individual texts
• Notes contain extra context and explanations of literary terms
• Historical, social and cultural contexts explored in introductory chapters and alongside discussions
• Modern critical theory and perspectives in practice
• Timelines and annotated further reading

Table of Contents

Part One: Introduction.

Part Two: A Cultural Overview

Part Three: Texts, Writers and Contexts

The moral novel: William Golding, Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark

Extended commentary: Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince (1978)

The postmodern novel: Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Graham Swift

Extended commentary: Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984)

The modern lyric: Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith

Extended commentary: Stevie Smith, ‘Thoughts about the Person from Porlock’ (1962)

The bardic line: Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes

Extended commentary: Tony Harrison, V. (1985)

Social dramas: Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, John Osborne

Extended commentary: Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine (1979)

New stages: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard

Extended commentary: Harold Pinter, The Room(1960)

Part Four: Critical Theories and Debates

Nostalgia and nationality

Immigrants and exiles                

Class and education

Sex and identity

Part Five: References and resources

Timeline

Further reading

Index

Back Cover

Post-war Literature, 1950–1990

The York Notes Companion to Post-War Literature examines the literary developments of the latter 20^th century, a period characterised by a tension between conservatism and innovation. Introducing key works and genres including the postmodern novels of Julian Barnes and Angela Carter, the modern lyrics of Philip Larkin and Sylvia Plath, and the inventive dramas of Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard, the Companion offers detailed commentaries on texts and guides students through key literary theories and debates. Connecting texts with their historical and scholarly contexts, this is essential reading for any student of post-war literature. 

Each York Notes Companion provides:

• Analysis  of key texts and debates  
• Extended  commentaries for further in-depth analysis of individual texts  
• Exploration  of historical, social and cultural contexts
• Annotations clarifying literary terms and events in history
• Modern  theoretical perspectives in practice  
• Timelines  and annotated further reading

William May is a Research Fellow in Humanities at the University of Southampton.

Author

Dr William May is a lecturer in Humanities at the University of Southampton. He completed a doctorate on the work of Stevie Smith at Balliol College, Oxford, and lectured at Bath Spa, Roehampton and St. Anne's College, Oxford, before joining Southampton in 2008. He has published widely on postwar British literature, co-edited the interdisciplinary essay collection From Self to Shelf: The Artist Under Construction (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), and recently published the monograph Stevie Smith and Authorship (OUP, 2010). His current research project, 'Setting Agendas', examines the relationship between contemporary British music and literature.