Reassessing the Twentieth-Century Canon: From Joseph Conrad to Zadie Smith

335 Pages·2014·3.959 MB·English

by  Nicola Allen, David Simmons (eds.)

Reassessing the Twentieth-Century Canon
Also by Nicola Allen
MARGINALITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVEL
Also by David Simmons
THE ANTI-HERO IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut
NEW CRITICAL ESSAYS ON KURT VONNEGUT
Reassessing the
Twentieth-Century Canon
From Joseph Conrad to Zadie Smith
Edited by
Nicola Allen
University of Wolverhampton, UK
and
David Simmons
University of Northampton, UK
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Nicola Allen and
David Simmons 2014
Individual chapters © Contributors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-36600-9
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-47397-7 ISBN 978-1-137-36601-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137366016
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To Philip Tew, whose encouragement and enthusiasm
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on Contributors x
Introduction 1
Nicola Allen and David Simmons
1 Snags in the Fairway: Reading Heart of Darkness 13
David Bradshaw
2 ‘Hasn’t got any name’: Aesthetics, African Americans and
Policemen in The Great Gatsby 27
Nicolas Tredell
3 Urban Spaces, Fragmented Consciousness, and
Indecipherable Meaning in Mrs Dalloway 43
Andrew Harrison
4 D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the
New Century: Literary Canon and Bodily Episteme 56
Richard Brown
5 A Handful of Dust: Realism: Modernism/Irony: Sympathy 75
Richard Jacobs
6 Studied Ambivalence: The Appalling Strangeness of
Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock 91
Susie Thomas
7 “Come Down from Your Thinkin’ and Listen a Minute”:
The Multiple Voices of The Grapes of Wrath 109
Jennifer Butler Keaton
8 Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses Revisited 122
Linda Wagner-Martin
9 Time, Space, and Resistance: Re-Reading George
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four 134
Lawrence Phillips
10 Lucky Jim: The Novel in Unchartered Times 146
Nicola Allen and Wasfi Shoqairat
11 Six Myths of On the Road, and Where These Might Lead Us 161
R. J. Ellis
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viii Contents
12 ‘Hundred-per-Cent American Con Man’: Character in
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 175
David Simmons
13 Herzog’s Masculine Dilemmas, and the Eclipse of
the Transcendental “I.” 187
Gloria L. Cronin
14 Beyond Postmodernism in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark 206
Claire Allen
15 Gender Vertigo: Queer Gothic and Angela Carter’s
Nights at the Circus 221
Sarah Gamble
16 Whole Families Paranoid at Night: Don DeLillo’s White Noise 235
Martyn Colebrook
17 Hooked on Classics: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
25 Years On 250
Sonya Andermahr
18 Remembering and Disremembering Beloved:
Lacunae and Hauntings 266
Gina Wisker
19 Embracing Uncertainty: Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha
of Suburbia and The Black Album 281
Susan Alice Fischer
20 Samad, Hancock, the Suburbs, and Englishness:
Re-reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth 294
Philip Tew
Select Bibliography 310
Index 312
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all of the contributors for their excellent work
and persistence with what was, at times, a very difficult project to bring to
fruition. Extra thanks are due to Lawrence Phillips, Nicolas Tredell, David
Bradshaw, and Richard Brown for their suggestions of other possible con-
tributors. The collection was originally conceived during conversations with
Philip Tew and Steven Barfield, and we owe a debt of gratitude to them for
providing inspiration for the project. We would also like to thank Palgrave
Macmillan for making the book possible and being so supportive of the proj-
ect from the beginning of our relationship with them. We owe a huge debt
of gratitude to our families who have always provided love and encourage-
ment throughout the long process of putting the collection together.
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