Rewriting the North

Contemporary British Fiction and the Cultural Politics of Devolution
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-48502-7
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 190 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 287 g

Reihe: 21st Century Perspectives on British Literature and Society

This book shows how twenty-first-century writing about Northern England imagines alternative democratic futures for the region and the English nation, signalling the growing awareness of England as a distinct and variegated political formation. In 2016, the Brexit vote intensified ongoing constitutional tensions throughout the UK, which have been developing since the devolution of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in 1997. At the same time, British devolution developed a distinctively cultural registration as a surrogate for parliamentary representation and an attempt to disrupt the status of London as Britain’s cultural epicentre. Rewriting the North shifts this debate in a new direction, examining Northern literary preoccupation with devolution’s constitutional implications. Through close readings of six contemporary authors – Sunjeev Sahota, Sarah Hall, Anthony Cartwright, Adam Thorpe, Fiona Mozley, and Sarah Moss – this book argues that literary engagement with the North emphasises regional devolution's limited constitutional charge, calling instead for an urgent abandonment of the British centralised state form.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, Undergraduate Advanced, and Undergraduate Core

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ashbridge, Chloe

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gewalt und Diskriminierung: Soziale Aspekte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Declaration

Introduction: Placing the Cultural Politics of Devolution

Part 1: Stress Fractures

Chapter 1: Multicultural Britishness and the Urban North

Chapter 2: Post-British England and the Rural North

Part 2: Revolt

Chapter 3: Brexit England and the Deindustrial North

Chapter 4: Global Britishness and the Neo-Primitive North

Conclusion: Regional Development and the ‘Cultural Turn’
Works Cited

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Chloe Ashbridge is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University, where her research concerns the interplay between British literature and politics. She is the author of several publications on working-class writing and neoliberalism, regional uneven development in Brexit literature, and the relationship between the literary North and Black Britishness. Chloe is currently researching the function of regional literary awards in the context of Britain’s devolving cultural and creative economy. Rewriting the North is her first book.