Reading behind the lines (eBook)

Postmemory in contemporary British war fiction

Natasha Alden (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015
208 Seiten
Manchester University Press (Verlag)
978-1-5261-0261-4 (ISBN)

Infos

This study applies the concept of postmemory, developed in Holocaust studies, to novels by contemporary British writers. The first monograph-length study of postmemory in British fiction, it focuses on a group of texts about the World Wars.

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This book takes the concept of postmemory, developed in Holocaust studies, and applies it for the first time to novels by contemporary British writers. Focusing on war fiction, Alden builds upon current scholarship on historical fiction and memory studies, and extends the field by exploring how the use of historical research within fiction illuminates the ways in which we remember and recreate the past.

Using postmemory to unlock both the transgenerational aspects of the novels discussed and the development of historiographic metafiction, Alden provides a ground-breaking analysis of the nature and potential of contemporary historical fiction. By examining the patterns and motivations behind authors’ translations of material from the historical record into fiction, Alden also asks to what extent such writing is, necessarily, metafictional. Ultimately, this study offers an updated answer to the question that historical fiction has always posed: what can fiction do with history that history cannot?

Autor

Natasha Alden is Lecturer in Contemporary British Fiction at Aberystwyth University

Inhalt

1. Introduction
i. “Flickering at the Edge of My Childhood”
ii. Graham Swift: “Finding out what Father Was Made Of”
3. Regenerating the past: fact and fiction in the Regeneration Trilogy
4. “In the beginning was the word; and to that it came back in the long run”: Briony Tallis and Atonement
5. Lesbian postmemory: Haunted ‘history’ in The Night Watch
6. Conclusion: “…it may help the reader to know what is historical and what is not”
Bibliography
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.11.2015
• Verlagsort: Manchester
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 140 x 140 mm
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Mittelalter
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Contemporary fiction • historical fiction • Historiographic Metafiction • Memory • Postmemory • Queer Fiction • World Wars
• ISBN-10: 1-5261-0261-7 / 1526102617
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5261-0261-4 / 9781526102614