British Literature in Transition, 1940–1960: Postwar

441 Pages·2019·2.588 MB·English

by  Gill Plain (editor)

BRITISH LITERATURE IN TRANSITION,
1940–1960
: POSTWAR
‘Postwar’isbothaperiodandastateofmind,asensibilitycomprised
of hope, fear and fatigue in which British society and its writers
paradoxically yearned both for political transformation and
anostalgicreinstatementofpastsecurities.FromtheLabourlandslide
victoryof1945totheemergenceoftheColdWarandthehumiliation
ofSuezin1956,thiswasaperiodofradicalpoliticaltransformationin
Britain and beyond, but these changes resisted literary assimilation.
Arguing that writing and history do not map straightforwardly one
ontotheother,andthatthepostwarcannoteasilybefittedintothe
explanatory paradigms of modernism or postmodernism, this book
offersamorenuancedrecognitionofwhatwaswrittenandreadinthe
period. From wartime radio writing to 1950s travellers, Cold War
poetry to radical theatre, magazine cultures to popular fiction, this
volumeexaminesimportantdebatesthatanimatedpostwarBritain.
gill plain isProfessorofEnglishattheUniversityofStAndrews.
ShehasresearchinterestsinBritishliteratureandcultureofthe1940s,
warwriting,crimefiction,Britishcinema,feministtheoryandgender
studies.HerpublicationsincludeWomen’sFictionoftheSecondWorld
War(1996),Twentieth-CenturyCrimeFiction(2001),JohnMillsand
British Cinema: Masculinity, Identity and Nation (2006) and
Literature of the 1940s: War, Postwar and ‘Peace’ (2013).She has also
editedanumberofvolumesincludingAHistoryofFeministLiterary
Criticism (co-edited with Susan Sellers, 2007) and Scotland and the
FirstWorldWar:Myth,MemoryandtheLegacyofBannockburn(2017).
SheisGeneralEditoroftheBritishLiteratureinTransitionseries.
british literature in transition series
Editor
GillPlain,UniversityofStAndrews
BritishLiteratureinTransitionmapsacenturyofchange.Italsoseekstochange
the way we think about British literary history by reconsidering the canonical
certaintiesandcriticalnormsthatshapeourunderstandingoftwentieth-century
writing. Breaking down the century into twenty-year blocks, each substantial
volume surveys, interrogates and challenges prevailing assumptions of critical
memory to create a vibrant picture of literary culture in its time. Importantly,
this revisionary series both recognises the contingency of the ‘experimental’ and
argues that long-established canons do not do justice to the many and various
formsthatinnovationtookacrossthebreadthofthetwentiethcentury.Asaresult,
Transition reinstates lost complexities and reanimates neglected debates, its
authoritative new essays setting familiar figures alongside forgotten voices to
generate a rich and provocative picture of a transformative century. Exploring
transitions in writing, performance, publication and readership from the fin-de-
siècletothenewmillennium,theseriesoffersnewroutestoanunderstandingof
how British literature arrived in the twenty-first century and what made the
nation’swritingwhatitistoday.
Booksintheseries
BritishLiteratureinTransition,1900–1920:ANewAge?editedbyjames purdon
BritishLiteratureinTransition,1920–1940:FutilityandAnarchyeditedbycharles
ferrall and dougal mcneill
British Literature in Transition, 1940–1960: Postwar edited by gill plain
British Literature in Transition, 1960–1980: Flower Power edited by kate
mcloughlin
British Literature in Transition, 1980–2000: Accelerated Times edited by eileen
pollard and berthold schoene
BRITISH LITERATURE IN
1940–1960
TRANSITION, :
POSTWAR
edited by
GILL PLAIN
UniversityofStAndrews
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title:Britishliteratureintransition,1940–1960:postwar/editedbyGillPlain,
UniversityofStAndrews.
description:Cambridge;NewYork,NY:CambridgeUniversityPress,2018.|Includes
bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
identifiers:lccn2018042046|isbn9781107119017(hardback)
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Literatureandsociety–GreatBritain–History–20thcentury.
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Contents
ListofContributors pageviii
GeneralEditor’sPreface xiii
Acknowledgements xvi
Introduction 1
GillPlain
part i: aftermath: the beginning or the end? 31
1 SlenderMeans:TheNovelintheAgeofAusterity 37
MarinaMacKay
2 ImpossibleElegies:PoetryinTransition1940–1960 52
NigelAlderman
3 Democracy,DecentralisationandDiversity:TheRenaissance
ofBritishTheatre 68
RebeccaD’Monté
4 NationalTransitions:Wales,ScotlandandNorthernIreland 85
KatieGramich
5 HeroesofAusterity:GenreinTransition 101
GillPlain
6 WirelessWriting,theSecondWorldWarandtheWest
IndianLiteraryImagination 117
JamesProcter
part ii: the politics of transition 137
7 NarratingTransitionstoPeace:FictionandFilmafterWar 143
MarkRawlinson
v
vi Contents
8 Poetry,theEarlyColdWarandtheIdeaofEurope 161
AdamPiette
9 Horizon,EncounterandMid-CenturyGeopolitics 176
ThomasS.Davis
10 PublicIntellectualsandthePoliticsofLiterature:TheCauses
andCollaborationsofJ.B.PriestleyandJacquettaHawkes
Priestley 192
InaHabermann
11 PrizingtheNation:PostwarChildren’sFiction 209
LucyPearson
12 ArtistsofTheirTime:ThePostwarBattleforRealism
inLiteratureandPainting 225
AliceFerrebe
part iii: reconfigurations 243
13 Demob:ThePostwarOriginsoftheNewNatureWriting 249
LeoMellor
14 OldHaunts:ChildhoodandHomeinPostwarFiction 267
VictoriaStewart
15 NewUsesofLiteracy:TheBlankPageandWriting
intheAftermathofWar 282
TracyHargreaves
16 ThePursuitofLove:WritingPostwarDesire 297
CharlotteCharteris
17 CreatingVitalTheatre:NewVoicesinaTimeofTransition 313
ClaireCochrane
part iv: no directions 331
18 CovertLegaciesinPostwarBritishFiction 337
JamesSmith
19 ‘TheSightsareWorsethantheJourneys’:TravelWriting
attheMid-Century 353
PetraRau
Contents vii
20 TheFutureandtheEnd:ImaginingCatastrophe
inMid-CenturyBritishFiction 369
AllanHepburn
21 ExhaustedLiterature:ThePostwarNovelinRepose 385
KateMcLoughlin
Index 400
Contributors
nigel alderman is Associate Professor of English at Mount Holyoke
College. He has published on British poetry from John Milton to the
present. Most recently he has co-written with Michael Thurston,
ReadingPostwarBritishandIrishPoetry(2014).
charlotte charteris isaformerLeverhulmeEarlyCareerFellowin
EnglishandBy-FellowofChurchillCollege,Cambridge,specialisingin
literatureofthefin-de-siècle,modernistandmid-twentieth-centuryper-
iods, with a particular interest in queer studies and the aesthetics of
transgression. She has published on a range of authors, including
Edward Upward, Julian Maclaren-Ross, Patrick Hamilton and
GrahamGreene.
claire cochrane is Professor of Theatre Studies at Worcester
University. She has published widely on twentieth- and twenty-first-
century British theatre, with particular interests in regional building-
basedtheatreandBlackBritishandBritishAsiantheatreandaudiences.
Her monograph Twentieth Century British Theatre: Industry, Art and
Empire was published in 2011. Most recently she has co-edited with Jo
Robinson a collection of essays in Theatre History and Historiography:
Ethics,EvidenceandTruth(2016).
thomas s. davis is Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State
University. He is the author of The Extinct Scene: Late Modernism and
Everyday Life (2015). His work on twentieth- and twenty-first-century
literature and culture has appeared in edited collections and journals
such as Textual Practice, Literature Compass, Twentieth Century
Literature and English Language Notes. He is currently working on
abookabouttheaesthetics,politicsandculturallifeofclimatechange.
rebecca d’monte´ isSeniorLecturerinDramaattheUniversityofthe
West of England. She specialises in the work of women writers and
viii
ListofContributors ix
twentieth-centuryBritishdramaandistheauthorofBritishTheatreand
Performance1900–1950(2015).Sheiscurrentlyworkingonabookabout
BritishtheatreintheSecondWorldWar.
alice ferrebe is Subject Leader for English at Liverpool John Moores
University. Her publications include Masculinity in Male-Authored
Fiction, 1950–2000 (2005) and Literature of the 1950s: Good, Brave
Causes (2012). She is currently working on the intersections between
visualartandliteraturein1950sBritishculture.
katie gramich isProfessorofEnglish LiteratureatCardiff University.
Her research interests are in the literatures of Wales, women’s writing,
modernpoetryandtranslation.Shehaspublishedahistoryoftwentieth-
centuryWelshwomen’swritingandamonographonKateRoberts,and
iscurrentlyworkingonatranslationoftheworkofthefifteenth-century
Welshfemalepoet,GwerfulMechain.
ina habermann is Professor of English at the University of Basel and
Director of the Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies. Her
fields of research include early modern literature and drama with
a focus on Shakespeare, 1930s and 1940s literature and film, including
middlebrowstudies,culturalhistoryandtheoryandspatialstudies.She
is the author of Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England
(2003)andMyth,MemoryandtheMiddlebrow:Priestley,duMaurierand
theSymbolicFormofEnglishness(2010).
tracy hargreaves is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary
LiteratureintheSchoolofEnglish,UniversityofLeeds.Hermostrecent
publications include a co-edited edition of literature of the 1950s and
1960swithAliceFerrebeandessaysonDorisLessingandfilmcensorship
in the 1960s. She is currently working on a critical study of ‘Intimacy
andtheEnglishImagination:1945–1968’.
allan hepburn is James McGill Professor of Twentieth-Century
Literature at McGill University. In addition to writing Intrigue:
Espionage and Culture (2005) and Enchanted Objects: Visual Art in
Contemporary Literature (2010), he has edited four volumes dedicated
to the short stories, essays, broadcasts and book reviews of Elizabeth
Bowen. He also edited Troubled Legacies: Narrative and Inheritance
(2007) and Around 1945: Literature, Citizenship, Human Rights (2016).
HisnextbookisamonographaboutreligiousfaithinBritishcultureat
mid-century.