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Author Henstra, Sarah

Title The counter-memorial impulse in twentieth-century English fiction / Sarah Henstra
Published Basingstoke, UK ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 182 pages)
Contents Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Literature Beyond Consolation€ -- Melancholia, Group Psychology, Irony: Psychoanalytic Foundations -- The End of Empire: Grieving, Englishness, and Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier -- Mourning the Future: The Nuclear Threat, Prophecy, and Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook -- Embodied Grief: Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body and the Elegiac Tradition -- Conclusion: A Literature of Hope: Ethics and Mourning -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Introduction : literature beyond consolation -- Melancholia, group psychology, irony : psychoanalytic foundations -- The end of empire : grieving, Englishness, and Ford Madox Ford's The good soldier -- Mourning the future : nuclear war, prophecy, and Doris Lessing's The golden notebook -- Embodied grief : the elegiac tradition and Jeannette Winterson's Written on the body -- Conclusion : literature of hope : ethical mourning
Summary The Counter-Memorial Impulse describes the tendency in 20th-century English fiction to resist commemorative models and to treat grief as an occasion for social critique. At a time when public memorial projects are hotly debated in the media and 'archive fever' has gripped the humanities, this book offers timely and original insights the literary treatment of mourning and remembrance. Sarah Henstra explores the relationship between (post)modern innovations in narrative form and the historical events that transformed England's collective sense of self during this period. Henstra's unconventional readings of well-loved novels by Ford Madox Ford, Doris Lessing, and Jeanette Winterson illustrate the new approaches demanded by such 'unmournable' conditions as post-imperial melancholy, nuclear fear, and homophobia. These writers take iconoclastic, often controversial, approaches to commemoration, and as such their work suggests possibilities for artistic and political intervention at a particularly critical moment in England's relationship to its past
"A wide-ranging study that examines the tendency in 20th-century English fiction to treat grief as an occasion for social critique, unconventional readings of works by Ford, Lessing, and Winterson demonstrate how narrative experimentation in this period responds to socio-historic conditions like post-imperial melancholy, nuclear fear and homophobia"--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Grief in literature.
Grief -- Political aspects
Memorials in literature.
Authors, English -- 20th century -- Political and social views
Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century
Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers -- English.
Literary studies: from c 1900 -- English.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Literature.
Authors, English -- Political and social views
English fiction
Grief in literature
Literature and society
Memorials in literature
Literatur
Trauer Motiv
Gedenken Motiv
Great Britain
Englisch.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780230297357
0230297358