Jim Crace: Into the Wilderness

Description

This is a unique essay collection on Jim Crace, locating his writing within contemporary philosophical, cultural and political debates. This timely first critical collection of essays on Crace’s work provides a retrospective on his work to date, locating his work within a number of contemporary interdisciplinary critical and cultural perspectives and concerns, including post-humanism, post-millennial pastoralism, post-post feminism and gender, intersections between science and literary theory, environmental politics, the symbiotics of authorial and critical archival work, and the context of the burgeoning world of literary prizes. It includes additional contextual material in the form of an interview with Jim Crace and the re-publication of a seminal critical essay on “Craceland” by Adam Begley. As such this critical essay collection will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary fiction, and Crace’s unique writing. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii ‘Craceland’: An Introduction (Katy Shaw, Kate Aughterson)....Pages 1-15 1 Pastoral Negativities and the Dynamics of the Storyteller in Jim Crace’s Harvest (Philip Tew)....Pages 17-31 2 Pastoral Concerns in the Fictions of Jim Crace (Deborah Lilley)....Pages 33-48 3 Ecocriticism and Jim Crace’s Early Novels (Astrid Bracke)....Pages 49-63 4 ‘False patterns out of chaos’: Writing Beyond the Sense of an Ending in Being Dead and The Pesthouse (Diletta De Cristofaro)....Pages 65-79 5 A Different Kind of Wilderness: Decomposition and Life in Jim Crace’s Being Dead (Ivan Callus, Sandro Lanfranco)....Pages 81-94 6 Absented Women’s Voices: Problematising Masculinity in Jim Crace’s Fiction (Kate Aughterson)....Pages 95-111 7 The Bald and the Beautiful: The Figure of the Shaven-Headed Female in the Fiction of Jim Crace (Nicola Allen)....Pages 113-130 8 Searching for the Gleaning Fields: Gleaners and Leanness in Jim Crace’s Harvest (Natalie Joelle)....Pages 131-148 9 Thinking Crace: Consciousness and Cognition in Jim Crace’s Quarantine and Being Dead (Sebastian Groes)....Pages 149-164 10 Jim Crace: Inventor of Worlds (David Jasper)....Pages 165-180 11 An Atheist’s Spirituality: Jim Crace’s Post-Religious Fiction (Andrew Tate)....Pages 181-196 12 “Sentences with Wings”: Jim Crace in Conversation with Dr Kate Aughterson (Kate Aughterson, Jim Crace)....Pages 197-207 Back Matter ....Pages 209-212