Literary Politics
Also by Deborah Philips FAIRGROUND ATTRACTIONS: An Archaelogy of The Narratives of The Pleasure Garden WRITING ROMANCE: Post-War Women s Fiction 1945 2005 WRITING WELL: Creative Writing and Mental Health (with Liz Linington and Debra Penman) BRAVE NEW CAUSES: Postwar Popular Fictions for Women (with Ian Haywood) THE TROJAN HORSE: The Growth of Commercial Sponsorship (with Garry Whannel) Also by Katy Shaw MINING THE MEANING: Re-Writing the 1984 5 UK Miners Strike ANALYSING DAVID PEACE DAVID PEACE: Texts and Contexts
Literary Politics The Politics of Literature and the Literature of Politics Edited by Deborah Philips Professor in Literature and Cultural History, University of Brighton, UK and Katy Shaw Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of Brighton, UK
Introduction, selection and editorial matter Deborah Philips & Katy Shaw 2013 Individual chapters Contributors 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-27013-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-44426-7 DOI 10.1057/9781137270146 ISBN 978-1-137-27014-6 (ebook) This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
R.I.P., The English Subject Centre
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Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors ix x 1 Introduction: The Politics of Literature and the Literature of Politics 1 Deborah Philips 2 Literature and Politics 15 Stuart Laing 3 Shakespeare v. The BNP 25 Adam Hansen 4 Roaring Boys and Weeping Men: Radical Masculinity in Webster s The Duchess of Malfi 45 Kate Aughterson 5 Having the Last Word: World War I Fictions as Counter-Narratives 65 Zacharoula Christopoulou 6 Show an Affirming Flame : Writers and Readers in Modern Dark Times 77 Rosalind Brunt 7 Literature, Politics and History 95 Paddy Maguire 8 The Politics of Nostalgia in the Rural English Novel 117 Dominic Head 9 (Re)Writing the 1984 1985 UK Miners Strike 137 Katy Shaw 10 Can the Environment be Saved? Post-Apocalyptic Children s Novels of the 1980s 153 Dave Simpson vii
viii Contents 11 Access All Areas? Literature and Education 165 Steve Roberts 12 The Politics of Enhancement: The Last Days of the English Subject Centre 181 Ben Knights Bibliography 195 Index 203
Acknowledgements This collection, and the symposium which gave rise to it, would not have been possible without the help and support of the English Subject Centre. Particular thanks are due to Nicole King, of the Subject Centre, who helped enormously in its organisation and planning. We would also like to thank Elspeth Broady and Richard Jacobs, both of whom stepped into the breach on the day. Thanks too to the University of Brighton and to Stuart Laing and Paddy Maguire for providing the space in which our debates could take place and for taking part in it themselves. ix
Notes on Contributors Kate Aughterson is Academic Programme director for Literature, Media and Screen at the University of Brighton. Her research is interdisciplinary, with a particular focus on seventeenth century drama, gender, sexuality and performance culture. She is the author of: John Webster: The Tragedies (2001) Aphra Benn: The Comedies (2003), and editor of Renaissance Women: A Sourcebook (1995) and The English Renaissance: An Anthology of Sources and Documents (1998). Rosalind Brunt is Visiting Research Fellow in Media Studies at Sheffield Hallam University and a Research Association of the Media Discourse Group, De Montfort University, Leicester. She was the founding chair of the Women s Media Studies Network for MeCCSA (Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association) and has written and researched widely in the areas of popular literature and culture. Most recently she contributed a chapter on the teaching of media studies to Richard Hoggart: Culture and Critique (eds. Michael Bailey and Mary Eagleton, 2011) and is now working on a follow-up to the collection she co-edited with Rinella Cere, Post-Colonial Media Culture in Britain (2010). Zacharoula Christopoulou was born in Athens and studied History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. After graduating, she pursued an MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent, focusing mainly on literary representations of historical trauma. She is currently completing her PhD thesis on Literature and Memory of the First World War at University College, London. Her research interests include: history, memory and narrative, the literature of trauma, political myth and the fantastic. Adam Hansen is Senior Lecturer in English at Northumbria University. He previously held teaching positions in various universities, York, Lódź, South East European University, Oxford and Queen s, Belfast. In 2009 he received an award for his research into student experience. He has published widely on early modern prose, poetry and drama, culminating in his monograph Shakespeare and Popular Music (2010). x
Notes on Contributors xi Dominic Head is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham. He is currently preparing Modernity and the Rural English Novel for publication by Cambridge University Press. Previous books include The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction 1950 2000 (2002) and The State of the Novel: Britain and Beyond (2008). He is the editor of The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (3rd edn, 2006). Ben Knights taught at the universities of Cambridge, Durham and Teesside. From 2003 to 2011 he was the Director of the Higher Education Academy English Subject Centre. His recent books include: Active Reading: Transformative Writing in Literary Studies (with Chris Thurgar-Dawson, 2006), and the edited collection Masculinities in Text and Teaching (2008). Stuart Laing is Professor of Cultural Studies and Deputy Vice- Chancellor at the University of Brighton. He has published over thirty books, chapters and articles in literary and cultural studies and is the author of Representations of Working-Class Life 1957 64 (1986). He continues to teach at undergraduate level and to undertake postgraduate research supervision. Paddy Maguire is a historian and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton. He has been closely involved with the History Workshop movement through his work with the History Workshop Trust, and with the Co-operative movement, and the Society for the Study of Labour Movements. He has acted as a consultant to academic publishers and to archive and museum projects, especially the Working Class Movement Library and the National Museum of Labour History. Deborah Philips is Professor of Literature and Cultural History at the University of Brighton. She has published widely on feminist theory, popular culture and post-war women s fiction. Her books include: Fairground Attractions: A Genealogy of the Pleasure Garden (2012) Writing Romance: Post-war Women s fiction 1945 2005 (2006) and, with Ian Haywood, Brave New Causes: Post-war Popular Fictions for Women (1998) and The Trojan Horse: The Growth of Commercial Sponsorship (co-authored with Garry Whannel).
xii Notes on Contributors Steve Roberts became a Senior Lecturer in English and Route Leader for PGCE Secondary English at the University of Brighton in 2004. After gaining his BA in English and Drama at Goldsmiths College (University of London) in 1981, he worked as an actor. He trained to be a teacher of English and completed his PGCE in English with Drama at the Roehampton Institute (University of Surrey) in 1993. He completed his MA in Education in 2009 and is currently pursuing doctoral studies. Steve began his career as a teacher of English working in schools in inner-london. He has been a subject leader, as Head of English, in secondary schools in London and the South-East of England. Katy Shaw is Principal Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Brighton, and is an authority on the literature of the 1984 1985 miners strike and twenty-first century literatures. Her research interests include contemporary writings, especially working class literature, literatures of post-industrial regeneration and the languages of comedy. She is editor of C21 Literature: A Journal of 21st Century Writings and is Director of the C21 Centre for Research in twenty-first century writings at the University of Brighton. She is also a member of the editorial board for the journal Comedy Studies. Dave Simpson teaches in the School of Education at the University of Brighton. He works on undergraduate and postgraduate courses and has carried out research projects for local authorities into drama teaching. He is currently working on the representation of the environment in young adult and children s fiction.