Traces of Another Time: History and Politics in Postwar British Fiction

226 Pages·1990·6.21 MB·English

by  Margaret Scanlan

Traces of Another Time

Traces of Another Time
HISTORY AND POLITICS IN
POSTWAR BRITISH FICTION
Margaret Scanlan
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright O 1990 by Pnnceton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom Pnnceton University Press, Oxford
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Catalogmg-m-Publication Data
Scanlan, Margaret, 1944-
Traces of another time history and politics in postwar British fiction /
Margaret Scanlan
ρ cm
Includes bibliographical references
1 English fiction—20th century—History and criticism
2 Histoncal fiction, English—History and criticism 3 Political
fiction, English—History and criticism 4 Northern Ireland in
literature 5 Ireland in literature I Title
PR888 H5S3 1990 823' 91409358—dc20 89 35996
ISBN 0-691-06824-0 (alk paper)
This book has been composed in Linotron Caledonia
Princeton University Press books are printed
on acid-free paper, and meet the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of
the Council on Library Resources
Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press,
Princeton, New Jersey
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To John, Christopher, Patrick, and Andrew

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
PART ONE: Troubles in Ireland
CHAPTER ONE
Iris Murdoch's The Red and the Green 23
CHAPTER TWO
Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September and J. G.
Farrell's Troubles 40
CHAPTER THREE
Northern Ireland in Four Contemporary Novels 63
PART TWO: Losing Confidence: Spies and
Other Aliens
CHAPTER FOUR
Philby and His Fictions 87
CHAPTER FIVE
Iris Murdoch's Nuns and Soldiers 116
PART THREE: Apocalypse
CHAPTER SIX
Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet 135
CHAPTER SEVEN
Doris Lessing's Children of Violence 157
viii · Contents
CHAPTER EIGHT
Anthony Burgess's The End of the World News 175
Afterword 195
Bibliography 197
Index 207
Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE to express my appreciation to Indiana Univer­
sity at South Bend for supporting my research with three
summer faculty fellowships and a sabbatical. During that sab­
batical in 1982-19831 was a visiting faculty fellow at Princeton
University, where the original drafts of four chapters of this
book were written; I am grateful to the Department of Com­
parative Literature for providing this status, which made pos­
sible my research in the Firestone Library. I have also twice
benefited from National Endowment for the Humanities sem­
inars at Princeton. In 1975-1976 I held a Fellowship in Resi­
dence for College Teachers and participated in a seminar
taught by Victor Brombert. That long-ago seminar on ideol­
ogy in nineteenth-century French fiction is everywhere and
nowhere in this book on history in the postwar British novel,
and I remain indebted to Professor Brombert for providing a
model of how one might approach the question posed by
Stendhal's famous gunshot at the concert, as well as for his
many kindnesses over the intervening years. In the summer
of 1988 I participated in a seminar on "Literature as a Socially
Constructed Reality" directed by Alvin Kernan. I am more
indebted to Professor Kernan than I can easily express, spe­
cifically for his lucid reading of the manuscript of this book
and his encouragement at a critical time and more generally
for his warmth, humor, and intelligence. I am also grateful to
Professor David Leon Higdon of Texas Tech University for a
careful reading that gave me the benefit of his broad expertise
in contemporary British fiction.
Several colleagues at Indiana University, both in South
Bend and Indianapolis, have read parts or all of this manu­
script. I would especially like to thank Lawrence Clipper,
Gloria Kaufman, Richard Turner, and William Touponce for
their critical insight and support. James Blodgett not only