The Fiction of Emyr Humphreys

Linden Peach

Description

For over half a century, Emyr Humphreys's work as a novelist, short story writer, poet, dramatist and television producer has been extraordinarily impressive. This pioneering and stimulating book considers Humphreys's fiction from a range of contemporary critical perspectives and stresses its relevance to the 21st century. Drawing on the work of leading modern cultural and literary theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Homi Bhabha, psychoanalytic critics such as Melanie Klein and Jacqueline Rose, and gender theorists such as Judith Butler, Linden Peach brings fresh perspectives to the content, structure and developing nature of Humphreys's work, employing, for example, historicist, post-historicist, new geography, psychoanalytic and feminist and postfeminist frameworks. Through detailed readings which highlight subjects such as gender identity, contested masculinities, war, pacifism, strangeness and 'otherness', problematic father and daughter relationships, and cultural discourse in complex linguistic environments, Peach suggests that Humphreys's work is best understood as 'dramatic', 'dissident' and/or 'dilemma' fiction rather than by the term 'Protestant novelist' which Humphreys used to describe himself at the outset of his career. Stressing how Humphreys came to see himself as more of a 'protesting' novelist, Peach examines how the dilemmas around which his fiction is based, originally linked to Humphreys's definition of himself as a 'protestant' writer, increasingly become sites in which controversial, and often dark themes, are explored. This approach to Humphreys's work is pursued through exciting readings of some of Humphreys best and lesser known works including A Man's Estate, A Toy Epic, Outside the House of Baal, the Best of Friends, salt of the Earth, Unconditional Surrender, The Gift of a Daughter, Natives, Ghosts and Strangers, Old people are a Problem, The shop and The Woman at the Window.
Part One: Frames and Contexts 1. Humphrey's Life and Works 2. What Kind of Fiction? 3. History, Space and Progress 4. Bodies in Time: Psychoanalytic Contours 5. Women, Feminism and Post-feminism Part Two: Readings 6. Resistance, Gender and Performative Identity: A Man's Estate 7. Contested Masculinities: A Toy Epic 8. Time and Being: Outside the House of Baal 9. Land of the Living and Epic Theatre 10. Warring Families: Unconditional Surrender and The Gift of a Daughter 11. Strangers in a Strange Land: Natives, Ghosts and Strangers and Old People are a Problem 12. Intimate Strangers: The Shop 13. Independence, Globalism and Nonconformity: The Woman at the Window 14. Afterword

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Idioma inglés
• Idioma galés
• Irish
• English
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish
• Wales
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708324042
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Writing Wales in English

The Fiction of Emyr Humphreys

Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Linden Peach

University of Wales Press

The Fiction of Emyr Humphreys

Writing Wales in English

CREWseries of Critical and Scholarly Studies General Editor: Professor M. Wynn Thomas (CREW, Swansea University)

ThisCREW series is dedicated to Emyr Humphreys, a major figure in the literary culture of modern Wales, a founding patron of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, and, along with Gillian Clarke and Seamus Heaney, one ofCREW’s Honorary Associates. Grateful thanks are extended to Richard Dynevor for making this series possible.

Other titles in the series Stephen Knight,A Hundred Years of Fiction(978-0-7083-1846-1) Barbara Prys-Williams,Twentieth-Century Autobiography(978-0-7083-1891-1) Kirsti Bohata,Postcolonialism Revisited(978-0-7083-1892-8) Chris Wigginton,Modernism from the Margins(978-0-7083-1927-7) Linden Peach,Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction(978-0-7083-1998-7) Sarah Prescott,Eighteenth-Century Writing from Wales: Bards and Britons (978-0-7083-2053-2) Hywel Dix,After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain(978-0-7083-2153-9) Matthew Jarvis,Welsh Environments in Contemporary Welsh Poetry (978-0-7083-2152-2) Harri Garrod Roberts,Embodying Identity: Representations of the Body in Welsh Literature(978-0-7083-2169-0) Diane Green,Emyr Humphreys: A Postcolonial Novelist?(978-0-7083-2217-8) M.Wynn Thomas,In the Shadow of the Pulpit: Literature and Nonconformist Wales (978-0-7083-2225-3)

The Fiction of Emyr Humphreys Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Writing Wales in English

LINDEN PEACH

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS CARDIFF 2011

© Linden Peach, 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without clearance from the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP. www.uwp.ac.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available form the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-7083-2216-1 e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2404-2

The right of Linden Peach is to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988

Printed in Wales by Dinefwr Press, Llandybïe

For Angela

C ONTENTS

General Editor’s Preface Preface Acknowledgements Note on Editions of Works by Emyr Humphreys

1 2 3 4 5

6

Part One: Frames and Contexts

Humphreys’s Life and Works

What Kind of Fiction?

History, Space and Progress

Bodies in Time: Psychoanalytic Contours

Women, Feminism and Post-feminism

Part Two: Readings

Resistance, Gender and Performative Identity:A Man’s Estate

7 Contested Masculinities:A Toy Epic 8 Time and Being:Outside the House of Baal 9 Land of the Living and Epic Theatre 10 Warring Families:Unconditional SurrenderandThe Gift of a Daughter

ix xi xiii xiv

3 18 36 68 82

99 116 125 145

168

viii

CONTENTS

11 Strangers in a Strange Land:Natives,Ghosts and Strangers andOld People are a Problem 12 Intimate Strangers:The Shop 13 Independence, Globalism and Nonconformity:The Woman at the Window 14 Afterword  Notes  Select Bibliography  Index

181 196

207 219 224 240 245