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Figures of Catastrophe: The Condition of Culture Novel
The leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the fiction of the past century, identifying a central new genre: the condition of culture novel. Reading across and against the grain of received patterns of literary association, tracing a line from Hardy and Forster, through Woolf, Waugh and Bowen, to Barstow, Fowles, Rendell, Naipaul, Amis, Kureishi and Smith, he elucidates the recurring topics and narrative logics of the genre, showing how culture emerges as a special ground of social conflict, above all between classes. The narrative evaluations of culture’s ends—the aspirations and the destinies of those whose lives are the subject of these novels—grow steadily darker over time, and the writing itself grows more introverted.
A concluding discussion elicits the characteristics of the English condition of culture novel, in an international setting, and closes in, finally, on the central conundrum of the genre: its uncanny reprise, in its own plane, of the historical arc of the modern labour movement in Britain, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through its post-war heyday to the seemingly inexorable decline of recent decades.
A concluding discussion elicits the characteristics of the English condition of culture novel, in an international setting, and closes in, finally, on the central conundrum of the genre: its uncanny reprise, in its own plane, of the historical arc of the modern labour movement in Britain, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through its post-war heyday to the seemingly inexorable decline of recent decades.
Reviews
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“Very welcome and important … the book is at once indispensable.”
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“Extraordinarily thorough and responsive ... austerely elegant ... in praise of a distinguished essay in cultural history and critical theory.”
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“This is a book to be grateful for.”
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“A richly informing and provocative work of intellectual history ... Mulhern marshals his evidence stwith a rare power of argument and a scrupulous fairness of coverage.”
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“An important and valuable book ... written with intensity and intelligence.”
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“An extraordinary, thoughtful and thought-provoking study, 'Figures of Catastrophe' is very highly recommended for community and academic library Literary Studies reference collections and supplemental curriculums.”
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“In Mulhern’s hands, the semiotic square reveals structural continuities between a wide range of novels without reducing them to an inexorable template…[F]ew critics could match the subtlety of Mulhern’s interpretations or the eloquent precision of his prose. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it sends the reader back to the novels to test out its hypotheses, thus providing an education in the condition of culture novel and its polymorphic figures of catastrophe.”
