British Avant-Garde Fiction of the 1960s / / Kaye Mitchell, Nonia Williams.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Mitchell, Kaye,; Williams, Nonia,
• MitwirkendeR: Clarke, Chris,; Darlington, Joseph,; Devaney, Kieran,; Ferris, Natalie,; Gutkin, Len,; Hove, Hannah,; Hucklesby, David,; Jones, Stephanie,; Kilian, Eveline,; MacKay, Marina,; Mitchell, Kaye,; Tew, Philip,; Webb, Christopher,; White, Glyn,; Williams, Nonia,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.) :; 4 B/W illustrations

Explores the trailblazing work of the British literary avant-garde of the 1960sThis collection showcases the liveliness of British avant-garde fiction of the 1960s, which is diverse in its aesthetic practices and (sometimes) divided in its politics. It brings together a selection of original, research-led essays on more than a dozen avant-garde British writers of the 1960s, revealing this to be a crucial – and crucially overlooked – period of British literary history.Via detailed readings of authors such as Ann Quin, B.S. Johnson, Alexander Trocchi, Maureen Duffy, Alan Burns, Christine Brooke-Rose and many others, the contributors reveal the diversity of material produced in this period and trace the complex relations of influence and indebtedness between the 60s avant-garde, earlier modernisms and later postmodern writing. The volume shows that the 1960s is an even more vibrant period of literary experiment in Britain than might previously have been supposed – and that the avant-garde fiction produced then rewards our renewed attention to it.Key Features:Provides much-needed critical analyses of the work of 60s avant-garde writers Offers focused essays – each presents one author in their cultural/critical/historical contexts – by experts in the fieldRecuperates a lost decade in British literature and thus fills a vital gap in literary history, between late modernism and early postmodernismResponds to burgeoning critical and popular interest in authors such as Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin, and B.S. Johnson, and to a widespread interest in experimental and innovative writing more generally

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: ‘The avant-garde must not be romanticized. The avant-garde must not be dismissed’ -- Contributors -- 1. Muriel Spark and the Possibility of Popular Experiment -- 2. B. S. Johnson: The Book as Dynamic Object -- 3. Giles Gordon: Beyond the Words and Beyond the Language of Experimentalism -- 4. Brigid Brophy’s Aestheticism: The Camp Anti-Novel -- 5. Alexander Trocchi: Man at Leisure -- 6. Anna Kavan: Pursuing the ‘in-between reality’ Hidden by the ‘ordinary surface of things’ -- 7. J. G. Ballard: Visuality and the Novels of the Near Future -- 8. Ann Quin: ‘infuriating’ Experiments? -- 9. Contradiction, Incongruity and Fragmentation: Political and Avant-Garde Compromise in the Work of Alan Burns -- 10. Eva Figes: Tracing the Survival of a ‘Poetry of the Inarticulate’ -- 11. Christine Brooke-Rose: The Development of Experiment -- 12. Aspirations Inevitably Failing: Hope and Negativity in Rayner Heppenstall’s Experimental Fiction of the 1960s -- 13. Maureen Duffy: The Politics of Experimental Fiction -- 14. Not the Last Word on the Sixties Avant-Garde: An Afterword -- Notes on Contributors -- Index