English 138 - Winter, 2013

British Literature 1945-Present

Class Information

Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 52742
Time: TR 12:10-1:30
Location: 106 Olson

Description

Britain in the 1970s

In the introduction to a book entitled The Break-up of Britain written in 1976, Tom Nairn argued "there is no doubt that the old British state is going down. But, so far at least, it has been a slow foundering rather than the Titanic-type disaster so often predicted. But in the 1970s it has begun to assume a form which practically no one foresaw...everything conspired to cause an inexorable spiral of decline. The slide would end in break-down sooner rather than later." That same year, violence in Northern Ireland reached devastating levels; the riots at that summer's Notting Hill Carnival (in which Black British youth fought back against an increasingly repressive police force) symbolized a particularly tense moment in British race relations; and the nihilism of the punks, the new subculture of choice for disaffected British youth, suggested the very real sense that there was no viable positive future.

British culture in the 1970s has long had a bad reputation; the historian Arthur Marwick, writing not long after the close of that decade, recalled that "by the end of the 1970s books and articles were being published on different variations of the 'Is Britain Dying?' theme. In addition to the problems of the economy, race, and civil violence, some writers also pointed to Britain's poor performance, after the excitements of the 1960s, in the realms of intellect, arts, and entertainment." Yet I have to disagree with that statement, as a number of interesting works emerged in that decade in all three of those areas. This course will seek to recover a sense of the literary and cultural diversity of Britain in the 1970s; in addition to literary works, we will be listening to and studying popular music-- glam rock, punk, and reggae-- of the period

Grading

TBA

Texts

The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi
Christie Malrys Own Double-Entry, B.S. Johnson
Selected Poems, Linton Kwesi Johnson
Translations, Brian Friel
North, Seamus Heaney
Cloud Nine, Caryl Churchill
assorted music by various glam, punk, and reggae musicians
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Concrete Island, J.G. Ballard