Kevin Brazil – författare

Art, History, and Postwar Fiction explores the ways in which novelists responded to the visual arts from the aftermath of the Second World War to the present day. If art had long served as a foil to enable novelists to reflect on their craft, this book argues that in the postwar period, novelists turned to the visual arts to develop new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between literature and history. The sense that the novel was becalmed in the end of history was pervasive in the postwar decades. In seeming to bring modernism to a climax whilst repeating its foundational gestures, visual art also raised questions about the relationship between continuity and change in the development of art. In chapters on Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, John Berger, and W. G. Sebald, and shorter discussions of writers like Doris Lessing, Kathy Acker, and Teju Cole, this book shows that writing about art was often a means of commenting on historical developments of the period: the Cold War, the New Left, the legacy of the Holocaust. Furthermore, it argues that forms of postwar visual art, from abstraction to the readymade, offered novelists ways of thinking about the relationship between form and history that went beyond models of reflection or determination. By doing so, this book also argues that attention to interactions between literature and art can provide critics with new ways to think about the relationship between literature and history beyond reductive oppositions between formalism and historicism, autonomy and context.

Art, History, and Postwar Fiction explores the ways in which novelists responded to the visual arts from the aftermath of the Second World War to the present day. If art had long served as a foil to enable novelists to reflect on their craft, this book argues that in the postwar period, novelists turned to the visual arts to develop new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between literature and history. The sense that the novel was becalmed in the end of history was pervasive in the postwar decades. In seeming to bring modernism to a climax whilst repeating its foundational gestures, visual art also raised questions about the relationship between continuity and change in the development of art. In chapters on Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, John Berger, and W. G. Sebald, and shorter discussions of writers like Doris Lessing, Kathy Acker, and Teju Cole, this book shows that writing about art was often a means of commenting on historical developments of the period: the Cold War, the New Left, the legacy of the Holocaust. Furthermore, it argues that forms of postwar visual art, from abstraction to the readymade, offered novelists ways of thinking about the relationship between form and history that went beyond models of reflection or determination. By doing so, this book also argues that attention to interactions between literature and art can provide critics with new ways to think about the relationship between literature and history beyond reductive oppositions between formalism and historicism, autonomy and context.

History, Time, and the Novel Since 1945 offers a new account of the relationship between history and the novel in the postwar period. The latter decades of the twentieth century saw many critics proclaim the 'end of history', and many novelists turn to metafiction to demonstrate the difficulties of representing the historical past. This emphasis on history as a question of textual representation, however, has overlooked the ways in which novelists have engaged with history as an experience of time. Drawing on theorists of history's recent 'temporal turn', this book argues that the novel's capacity to mediate experiences of time through form and style enables it to express the multiplicity of history temporalities through which historical change takes place. Ranging widely across British, American, African, and Caribbean literature, this book demonstrates that bringing close readings of style and form into dialogue with theorizations of historical time can provide a new account of what a historical novel can be.

Art, History, and Postwar Fiction explores the ways in which novelists responded to the visual arts from the aftermath of the Second World War to the present day. If art had long served as a foil to enable novelists to reflect on their craft, this book argues that in the postwar period, novelists turned to the visual arts to develop new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between literature and history. The sense that the novel was becalmed in the end of history was pervasive in the postwar decades. In seeming to bring modernism to a climax whilst repeating its foundational gestures, visual art also raised questions about the relationship between continuity and change in the development of art. In chapters on Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, John Berger, and W. G. Sebald, and shorter discussions of writers like Doris Lessing, Kathy Acker, and Teju Cole, this book shows that writing about art was often a means of commenting on historical developments of the period: the Cold War, the New Left, the legacy of the Holocaust. Furthermore, it argues that forms of postwar visual art, from abstraction to the readymade, offered novelists ways of thinking about the relationship between form and history that went beyond models of reflection or determination. By doing so, this book also argues that attention to interactions between literature and art can provide critics with new ways to think about the relationship between literature and history beyond reductive oppositions between formalism and historicism, autonomy and context.

Explores Doris Lessing’s innovative engagement with historical change in her own lifetime and beyondThe death of Nobel Prize-winning Doris Lessing sparked a range of commemorations that cemented her place as one of the major figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century world literature. This volume views Lessing’s writing as a whole and in retrospect, focusing on her innovative attempts to rework literary form to engage with the challenges thrown up by the sweeping historical changes through which she lived. The 12 original chapters provide new readings of Lessing’s work via contexts ranging from post-war youth politics and radical women’s writing to European cinema, analyse her experiments with genres from realism to autobiography and science-fiction, and draw on previously unstudied archive material. The volume also explores how Lessing’s writing can provide insight into some of the issues now shaping twenty-first century scholarship – including trauma, ecocriticism, the post-human, and world literature – as they emerge as defining challenges to our own present moment in history.Key FeaturesOffers a critical overview of the full range of Lessing’s work, setting the agenda for future study of her writingProvides new readings of an unprecedented range of Lessing’s writing, including previously unstudied archive material, landmark novels such as The Golden Notebook, drama and reportage, essays, memoirs and short storiesSituates Lessing in relation to new literary and cultural contexts, including the nineteenth-century novel-series, cinema, and post-war youth cultureRelates Lessing’s work to contemporary theoretical debates on post-humanism, trauma, ecocriticism, radical women’s writing and world literature

Explores Doris Lessing's innovative engagement with historical change in her own lifetime and beyondThe death of Nobel Prize-winning Doris Lessing sparked a range of commemorations that cemented her place as one of the major figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century world literature. This volume views Lessing's writing as a whole and in retrospect, focusing on her innovative attempts to rework literary form to engage with the challenges thrown up by the sweeping historical changes through which she lived. The 12 original chapters provide new readings of Lessing's work via contexts ranging from post-war youth politics and radical women's writing to European cinema, analyse her experiments with genres from realism to autobiography and science-fiction, and draw on previously unstudied archive material. The volume also explores how Lessing's writing can provide insight into some of the issues now shaping twenty-first century scholarship including trauma, ecocriticism, the post-human, and world literature as they emerge as defining challenges to our own present moment in history.Key FeaturesOffers a critical overview of the full range of Lessing's work, setting the agenda for future study of her writingProvides new readings of an unprecedented range of Lessing's writing, including previously unstudied archive material, landmark novels such as The Golden Notebook, drama and reportage, essays, memoirs and short storiesSituates Lessing in relation to new literary and cultural contexts, including the nineteenth-century novel-series, cinema, and post-war youth cultureRelates Lessing's work to contemporary theoretical debates on post-humanism, trauma, ecocriticism, radical women's writing and world literature