There are some alternatives: Remembering 1980s Britain in contemporary British literature

<p>This thesis explores how the 1980s haunt contemporary British literature. Cognizant of a trend of cultural production (literary, film, television, music) interested in this period since the beginning of the twenty-first century, this thesis focuses on three historical novels by three critically acclaimed authors: Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, David Peace’s GB84 (both 2004) and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006). It reads these historical novels as memory texts conditioned both by their moment of publication (mid-2000s Britain under the premiership of Tony Blair) and the moments of the 1980s that they remember (1980s Britain under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher). These novels are oriented around different facets of the 1980s (the high-Tory world, the 1984-85 miners’ strike and the Falklands War respectively) and so, read together, offer a cumulative portrait of the decade. However, each novel is read on its own terms for its specific interests in the public aspects of the 1980s. This thesis is thus divided into three chapters, with each taking a different memory discourse or mode as its analytical approach, as invited by the particularities of the novel it examines. The Line of Beauty is read in terms of the spectral presence of heritage; GB84 in terms of occulted and occulting nostalgia; Black Swan Green in terms of the media and postcolonial melancholia.</p>

There are some alternatives: Remembering 1980s Britain in contemporary British literature

<p>This thesis explores how the 1980s haunt contemporary British literature. Cognizant of a trend of cultural production (literary, film, television, music) interested in this period since the beginning of the twenty-first century, this thesis focuses on three historical novels by three critically acclaimed authors: Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, David Peace’s GB84 (both 2004) and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006). It reads these historical novels as memory texts conditioned both by their moment of publication (mid-2000s Britain under the premiership of Tony Blair) and the moments of the 1980s that they remember (1980s Britain under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher). These novels are oriented around different facets of the 1980s (the high-Tory world, the 1984-85 miners’ strike and the Falklands War respectively) and so, read together, offer a cumulative portrait of the decade. However, each novel is read on its own terms for its specific interests in the public aspects of the 1980s. This thesis is thus divided into three chapters, with each taking a different memory discourse or mode as its analytical approach, as invited by the particularities of the novel it examines. The Line of Beauty is read in terms of the spectral presence of heritage; GB84 in terms of occulted and occulting nostalgia; Black Swan Green in terms of the media and postcolonial melancholia.</p>

THE SHORT STORY CYCLE IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE (BASED ON THE SHORT STORIES BY J. MCGREGOR)

The article is devoted to the poetics of the short story cycle - a genre of short narrative fiction, where classical traditions and experimental narrative techniques are used to explicate topical issues of contemporary British literature. Beside the fact that the stories are relatively short, they are characterized by semantic compression, gaps in meaning, “internal” psychological plot, intensity, expressive imagery, lyricism, implications. The consistency of the short story cycle is created by thematic complementarity, coherence of style and composition. The short story cycle by J. McGregor ‘That Isn’t the Sort of Thing that Happens to Someone like You’ is devoted to everyday life of English Fenland inhabitants and can be attributed to the ‘narrative of community’ genre, traditional for British literature. McGregor’s short story cycle embodies almost all modern tendencies of the genre: a wide palette of themes within the framework of topical issues; vivid psychological portraits and images; variety of narrative types and forms; suggestiveness, implications, specific usage of pronouns, stylistic devices of contrast and repetition.

Reception of J. Austen’s creativity in Contemporary British Literature (Novel by Joe Baker “Longbourne”)

The experience of reception of creativity of J. Austen (1775—1817) in modern British literature is analyzed. The aim of the work was to identify the main directions and ideological and artistic functions of the deconstruction of pretext — the novel by J. Austen “Pride and Prejudice” (1813) — in the novel by Joe Baker (born in 1973) “Longbourne” (2013). It was revealed that the social, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-war, feminist components are the most significant in the deconstruction of pretext. For Baker, the main modes of rethinking the novel by J. Austen “Pride and Prejudice” become relevant in the modern social and cultural situation of revising the past and assessing the present in Britain, the problems of social contradictions, imperialism, colonialism and its consequences, the rights of women and minorities. It was concluded that in his artistic quest, Baker, although using the novel of the Regency era as a pretext, is moving closer to the neo-Victorian novel. It has been substantiated that it is advisable to clarify the definition of the “neo-Victorian novel of the younger generation” (the term by Y. S. Skorokhodko), designating works written in the pre-Victorian era, in particular, in the era of the Regency, as possible plot-forming pretexts, or to single out a new genre variety of British historiographic metanovel (L. Hutchen) — a Neo-Pre-Victorian novel.

HISTORICAL MEASURES AND PHILOSOPHICAL FEATURES OF BRITISH POST-POSTOMODERNISM: OUTLINING THE CONCEPT OF «CONNECTEDNESS»

In the paper, the author states that in the UK the emergence of theoretical compendia that represent and simultaneously revise the literary landscape of this country (as well as the United States), determines the necessity to outline the boundaries of the period, which in these works is defined as post-postmodernism. The latter concept has no clear theoretical explication and is discussed in the form of literary directions (altermodernism, digimodernism, metamodernism) that define new aesthetic and philosophical grounds that differ from postmodernism. In the paper, the author substantiates the historical boundaries of post-postmodernism, in particular emphasizing the factors that led to the formation of a new literary paradigm after 2000s. The ideas of British theorists on «realisms» in contemporary British literature have been developed with the emphasis on the presentation of new worldview models and identities in the contemporary British novels. A review of «The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction» (edited by D. O’Gorman and R. Eaglestone) is represented, which gives a condensed view of the aesthetic and philosophical pursuits of the contemporary British novel. The transformation of the archetype of Home in the paradigm of the contemporary (postpostmodern) novel has been spotlighted. Attention is drawn to explaining the representation of «one’s own» and «another’s» («alien») concepts, which reconstructs the traditional idea of Home as a space of protection and security. The transcultural processes inherent in the British novel have been discussed. The new character of the worldview (based on the materials of the novels by D. Mitchell and M. Haddon) has been outlined, which gives reason to speak abouta special postpostmodern way of observing the reality and provide its interpretations. The outline of the corpus of epistemological problems in the contemporary British novel actualizes the experience of philosophy of I. Kant, which is emphasized primarily by British theorists, referring in their own interpretative models to this tradition of German classical philosophy, which becomes important for the post-postmodern novels since 2000s.

The Mysterious Talent

The article studies giftedness and talent representation in contemporary British literature by means of analysing three novels: “When We Were Orphans” by Kazuo Ishiguro, “The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield and “Milton in America” by Peter Ackroyd. The topic of giftedness appears in these works as part of the genre and form game, which is an important immanent property of postmodern literature. The plots and themes are reconsidered and played with like a set of toy building blocks used to construct a new building that makes sense only in the context of the already existing constructions. The paper shows that the concept of giftedness appears in contemporary British novels mainly as part of a game of parody, which reflects the idea of the world as imagery and confusion.

KAZUO ISHIGURO. THE WRITER IN THE ‘FLOATING WORLD’

Novels by the Nobel Prize winner in literature 2017 K. Ishiguro are analyzed chronologically, from the first novel A Pale View of Hills (1982) to the latest one The Buried Giant (2015). As the article shows, the author, who represents two cultural traditions, the Japanese and the British ones, reflects this quality in his works. The writer himself states that his works were mainly formed by the European literary tradition and, consequently, his novel The Remains of the Day has become a concentrated study of Englishness, one of the most vivid in contemporary British literature. Experimenting with traditional literary forms, Ishiguro uses the stream-of-conscience technique, elements of science fiction, fantasy, detective genres, but each of his novels is unique and is characterized by deep overtones. Some constant elements of the writer’s works are discussed: unreliable narrators, the opposition of memory and history, the special role of children and of old people in his novels, the significant role of periods before and after historic events that are omitted in his novels, and recognizable language and style – compact, reserved and precise.

Ways of idiom transformation and modification

The present research focuses on phraseological derivation as an important key source of phraseological language system development and broadening. The study of contemporary British literature for teens and the analyses of the idioms used in literal works of selected and nominated authors let us come to certain conclusions which will be given in the present session. The aim of the present research is to reveal the contemporary ways of phraseological derivation and their speech realization in modern literal texts for teens. The object of the present research is a phraseological way of development in the contemporary phraseological English language system. The subject of the research is the communicative value and characteristics of phraseological derivatives. The results and data which were received will be useful for language instructors and teachers, as well as for further linguistic analyses in this field. Keywords: lexicology, phraseology, idioms, contemporary British literature for teens.