The British Novel since the Thirties [antikvár]

Preface Despite the funeral sermons that have been constantly pronounced over its death, the novel has probably never been more various, more interesting, more inventive, or more international in its sources and its scopes than today. Malcolm Bradbury adds to his general assessment of contemporary fiction a particular qualification: if there is evidence of great creative vitality and invention in the novel now, then where in it does the contemporary British novel stand? Certainly it does not seem to stand very high in terms of critical attention. Bradbury goes on to suggest that critics have concentrated on 'the period of Modernism', and that 'the period since its decline or disappearance has been a vague one' partly as a result.' The present study is directed towards dispelling this vagueness by showing how the novel has developed in Britain in the past half-century or so. The nineteen-eighties are as distant from Ulysses (1922) as Ulysses itself was from the novels of mid-Victorian times: as the twentieth century advances towards its end, there seems more and more need for a general assessment of what has happened in fiction since Joyce wrote. As Bradbury and other critics sometimes suggest, the period is a more worthwhile one than is often supposed: it can also be seen to possess a certain coherence, particular patterns of evolution arising from the situation of the novel established in 'the period of Modernism' in the first three decades of the century. This situation is outlined in Chapter One. Other chapters divide the developments which have followed into three main periods, while a last chapter considers separately the progress of 'experimental' fiction since the nineteen-thirties. General historical divisions of this sort provide a framework for analysis perhaps more appropriate for fiction than for either poetry or drama: as E.M. Forster suggests, 'prose, because it is a medium for daily life as well as for literature, is particularly sensitive to what is going on'.^ Several other commentators have also remarked that a characteristic of twentieth-century writing is the insistence with which it has been shaped by what has gone on in the violent and changeful history of the times. 7 i.' y-! ii , > I ;