Literature of the 1950s : good, brave causes
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Bibliographic Information
Literature of the 1950s : good, brave causes
（The Edinburgh history of twentieth-century literature in Britain, v. 6）
Edinburgh University Press, c2012
- : hardback
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [226]-244) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Challenges the myths about apathy and smugness surrounding British literature of the period. Alice Ferrebe's lively study rereads the decade and its literature as crucial in twentieth-century British history for its emergent and increasingly complicated politics of difference, as ideas about identity, authority and belonging were tested and contested. By placing a diverse selection of texts alongside those of the established canon of Movement and 'Angry' writing, a literary culture of true diversity and depth is brought into view. The volume characterises the 1950s as a time of confrontation with a range of concerns still avidly debated today, including immigration, education, the challenging behaviour of youth, nuclear threat, the post-industrial and post-imperial legacy, a consumerist economy and a feminist movement hampered by the perceivedly comprehensive nature of its recent success. Contrary to Jimmy Porter's defeatist judgement on his era in John Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger, the volume upholds such concerns as 'good, brave causes' indeed.
* Timely reassessment of a decade and its literature too often dismissed as apathetic and uninspiring * Comprehensive contextual coverage, situating texts within the wider cultural, literary and social movements of the era * Close-readings of neglected texts interrogate and extend received judgements on creative activity in the period * Tracing of defining themes across genres and national borders provides an innovative and truly inclusive study Key Words: 1950s literature, politics of difference, Angry Young Men, Movement, literary history
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1. Introduction: 'All this, and Everest too!'
- I. The Voice of the Young
- Chapter 2. The Metaphorical Utility of Youth
- Chapter 3. Angering Aunt Edna: 1950s Theatre
- Chapter 4. First Writing: 1950s Fiction
- III. The Less Deceived
- Chapter 5. Women, Children and Home
- Chapter 6. The Sensation of Movement: Poetry in the 50s
- Chapter 7. Evil Men: Literature and Homosexuality
- II. Postwar Settlements
- Chapter 8. Coming Home: The Literature of Immigration
- Chapter 9. Organic Communities: Regional Literature
- Chapter 10. The Scholarship Class: Literature and Social Mobility
- IV. Other Uses of Literacy
- Chapter 11. Criticism Under Scrutiny
- Chapter 12. The Dedicated Man: Publishing, Media and Reviewing
- Chapter 13. Where East Meets West: Literature, the New Left and the Cold War
- Chapter 14. Conclusions
- Works Cited.
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