British Literature in Transition, 1960–1980: Flower Power

Description

This volume traces transitions in British literature brought about by the rapid, momentous and far-reaching changes of the 1960s and 1970s, illuminating a diverse range of authors, texts, genres and movements. It looks at innovations in form, considering experimental poetry, fiction and drama, and explores the literature of emergent identities in race, gender, sexuality and class. It considers changes in attitudes and in the mind itself: the growth of environmentalism, perceptions of the past, psychedelia, the sexual revolution, and information control. It examines local and regional developments, visiting Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England. Finally, it focuses on shifts within the oeuvres of individual authors - two poets, two dramatists and a novelist: Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes, Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill, and Iris Murdoch. Copyright_page Dedication Contents Notes on Contributors General Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements Introduction part i: ventures in form Introduction 1 Error and Experiment in the 1960s British Novel 2 ‘A Different Kind of Inclusiveness’ 3 ‘A Revolutionary Proposal part ii: emergent identities Introduction 4 ‘Sight, Sounds and Meaning’ 5 Fate and Freedom in the Fiction of the Second Wave 6 Affluence and Its Discontents 7 Coming Out: The Emergence of Gay Literature part iii: changing minds Introduction 8 From Countryside to Environment: Reaching 9 Nostalgia and the Elegiac Mode 10 The Spiderhood 11 ‘Little Things’ 12 Inhuman Factors part iv: local and regional developments Introduction 13 In and Out of the Nation 14 Performing on the Fringe 15 Rejecting the Knitted Claymore 16 Oh So Loinerly 17 The End of ‘Home’ part v: individual transitions Introduction 18 Iris Murdoch: An Anatomy of Failure 19 Larkin’s Light 20 ‘Operating on Life, Not in It’ 21 ‘The Small Box’ 22 Caryl Churchill and the Vectors of Unhappiness Index