John Brannigan – författare

"Poverty is what I am writing about".In the late 1920s, Eric Blair resigned his post as a colonial policeman in Burma, immersed himself in the slums of Paris and London, and reinvented himself as George Orwell, one of the most revered prose stylists in the English language. Orwell decided to write about the lives of the poor - the dishwashers of Paris, the tramps of London - not by imagining poverty, but by experiencing poverty. The result is a book which is as provocative and incisive about class inequalities, homelessness, and social prejudices today as it was when it was first published in 1933.Down and Out in Paris and London was George Orwell's first book, and it remains a masterpiece of prose writing. This edition is accompanied by an introduction which examines Orwell's book for its literary, social, and political significance.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

New historicism and cultural materialism emerged in the early 1980s as prominent literary theories and came to represent a revival of interest in history and in historicising literature. Their proponents rejected both formalist criticism and earlier attempts to read literature in its historical context and defined new ways of thinking about literature in relation to history. This study explains the development of these theories and demonstrates both their uses and weaknesses as critical practices. The potential future direction for the theories is explored and the controversial debates about their validity in literary studies are discussed.

New historicism and cultural materialism emerged in the early 1980s as prominent literary theories and came to represent a revival of interest in history and in historicising literature. Their proponents rejected both formalist criticism and earlier attempts to read literature in its historical context and defined new ways of thinking about literature in relation to history. This study explains the development of these theories and demonstrates both their uses and weaknesses as critical practices. The potential future direction for the theories is explored and the controversial debates about their validity in literary studies are discussed.

This essential introductory guide provides a comprehensive critical survey of the diverse and rich body of literary writing produced in England in the postwar period. John Brannigan explores the relationship between literature and history, and analyses how poets, playwrights and novelists have revisited notions of Englishness, represented Englands of the past, and sought to make new 'maps' of English culture and society.Orwell to the Present: Literature in England, 1945-2000 combines original readings of familiar texts with wide-ranging explorations of the principal themes and historical and cultural contexts of literature since the end of the Second World War. Writers considered in detail include: Martin Amis, Simon Armitage, Pat Barker, John Betjeman, Edward Bond, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, Sam Selvon, Graham Swift and Evelyn Waugh.

This essential introductory guide provides a comprehensive critical survey of the diverse and rich body of literary writing produced in England in the postwar period. John Brannigan explores the relationship between literature and history, and analyses how poets, playwrights and novelists have revisited notions of Englishness, represented Englands of the past, and sought to make new 'maps' of English culture and society.Orwell to the Present: Literature in England, 1945-2000 combines original readings of familiar texts with wide-ranging explorations of the principal themes and historical and cultural contexts of literature since the end of the Second World War. Writers considered in detail include: Martin Amis, Simon Armitage, Pat Barker, John Betjeman, Edward Bond, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, Sam Selvon, Graham Swift and Evelyn Waugh.

Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms

Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms

This book provides a comprehensive account and critical analysis of the literary career of Pat Barker. It offers readings of Barker's innovations in narrative form, her revisionist perspectives on history, class and gender, and her preoccupation with themes of trauma, haunting and terror. It also analyses the reasons for her success and significance as a novelist. The chapters draw on contemporary theories of critical realism, gender and social identities, memory and narrative, in order to outline the debates with which Barker's work has consistently engaged.Brannigan argues that Barker is one of the most important writers in modern English literary history. She is principally renowned and widely acclaimed for her 'Regeneration' trilogy, the last volume of which, 'The Ghost Road', won the Booker Prize in 1995. In recent novels, Barker has continued to deal with controversial and shocking themes, including child murderers and the meanings of 'terror' in the contemporary world.

Offers a new archipelagic history of twentieth-century literature in Britain and IrelandArchipelagic Modernism examines the anglophone literatures of the archipelago from 1890 to 1970 for what they tell us about changing identities, geographies, and ecologies. The book argues that these literatures constitute an important resource for how we might begin to think about alternative political geographies, and alternative practices of belonging to place and environment. From the height of the British Empire in 1890, to the increasing sense by 1970 of the imminent ‘break-up’ of Britain, ‘archipelagic modernism’ turned to the ‘peripheral’ spaces of islands, coastlines, and the sea to re-invent the Irish and British archipelago as a plural and connective space.Key Features:Interdisciplinary – particularly the relationships between literature, ecology, and geography Offers a new interpretation of how literature engages with place and environment in the 20thCIncludes major new interpretations of key modernist writers such as Yeats, Synge, Joyce, and Woolf, and gives canonical examples of archipelagic modernism accessible to the classroom Exploratory – the book explores archipelagic narratives of literary history as a new model for understanding 20thC British and Irish literatures, and opens up ways of critically evaluating conventional literary histories of ‘EngLit’ and national literatures

Addresses for the first time the issue of Derrida's relation to French poetics, writing, thought, and culture.The French Connections of Jacques Derrida offers stimulating and accessible essays that address, for the first time, the issue of Derrida's relation to French poetics, writing, thought, and culture. In addition to offering considerations of Derrida through studies of such significant French authors as Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Valéry, Laporte, Ponge, Perec, Blanchot, and Barthes, the book also reassesses the development of Derrida's work in the context of structuralism, biology, and linguistics in the 1960s, and looks at the possible relationships between Derrida's writing and that of the Surrealist and Oulipa groups. Derrida is introduced as one whose work is as much poetic as it is philosophical, and who is strikingly French and yet not unproblematically so.[Contributors include Boris Belay, John Brannigan, Christopher Johnson, John P. Leavey, Jr., Ian Maclachlan, Jessica Maynard, Laurent Milesi, Ruth Robbins, Michael Syrotinski, Michael Temple, Burhan Tufail, and Julian Wolfreys.]