Research Catalog

Title

Imagination and the contemporary novel / John J. Su.

Author

Su, John J.

Publication

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 219 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

• "Imagination and the Contemporary Novel examines the global preoccupation with the imagination among literary authors with ties to former colonies of the British Empire since the 1960s. John Su draws on a wide range of authors including Peter Ackroyd, Monica Ali, Julian Barnes, Andre; Brink, J. M. Coetzee, John Fowles, Amitav Ghosh, Nadine Gordimer, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith. This study rehabilitates the category of imagination in order to understand a broad range of contemporary Anglophone literature. The responses of such literature to shifts in global capitalism have often been misunderstood by the dominant categories of literary studies, the postmodern and the postcolonial. As both an insightful critique into the themes that drive a range of today's best novelists and a bold restatement of what the imagination is and what it means for contemporary culture, this book breaks new ground in the study of twenty-first-century literature"--
• "Imagination and the Contemporary Novel examines the global preoccupation with the imagination among literary authors with ties to former colonies of the British Empire since the 1960s. John Su draws on a wide range of authors including Peter Ackroyd, Monica Ali, Julian Barnes, Andř Brink, J. M. Coetzee, John Fowles, Amitav Ghosh, Nadine Gordimer, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith. This study rehabilitates the category of imagination in order to understand a broad range of contemporary Anglophone literature. The responses of such literature to shifts in global capitalism have often been misunderstood by the dominant categories of literary studies, the postmodern and the postcolonial. As both an insightful critique into the themes that drive a range of today's best novelists and a bold restatement of what the imagination is and what it means for contemporary culture, this book breaks new ground in the study of twenty-first-century literature"--

Subject

• English fiction > 20th century > History and criticism
• English fiction > 21st century > History and criticism
• Imagination in literature
• Literature and globalization
• Postcolonialism in literature
• English fiction > English-speaking countries > History and criticism
• LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction: globalization, imagination, and the novel; 2. Aesthetic revolutions: white South African writing and the state of emergency; 3. The pastoral and the postmodern; 4. Hybridity, enterprise culture, and the fiction of multicultural Britain; 5. Ghosts of essentialism: racial memory as epistemological claim; 6. Amitav Ghosh and the aesthetic turn in postcolonial studies; Conclusion; Works cited.

Call Number

JFE 11-1422

ISBN

• 9781107006775 (hardback)
• 1107006775 (hardback)

LCCN

2011002470

OCLC

YBP 2011002470

Author

Su, John J.

Title

Imagination and the contemporary novel / John J. Su.

Imprint

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 11-1422