Contents

• Introduction
• Chronology
• Historical overview
• Literary Overview
• Sample Reading : George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Reference

Chapter 7 also includes detailed readings of the following literary texts:

• Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners
• Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
• Pat Barker, Union Street
• Sarah Kane, Blasted

Suggested essay questions

• What effects has the end of the British Empire had on postwar English literature?
• To what extent, and in what forms, have social changes in Britain since 1939 been reflected in English literature?
• What postwar English texts might be described as 'Condition of England' texts? Explain your choices.
• To what extent does religion continue to be a relevant theme in English literature since 1939?
• What accounts for the divergent ways in which literature and film responded to and represented the Second World War?
• What are the difficulties in describing post-war British literature as 'postmodern'?
• To what extent is the story one tells of post-war British literature different for each of the genres of poetry, drama and fiction?
• Is it accurate to say that a process of democratisation has been at work in English literary writing since 1939?
• What strategies have writers in England since 1939 used to deconstruct imperial ideologies?
• What literary texts since 1939 might be described as feminist texts, and what issues have feminist texts sought to tackle?
• What literary texts since 1939 exemplify Margaret Thatcher's view that 'there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families', and explain how they do so?
• Consider the extent to which George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was influenced by the experiences of the Second World War.
  
• If, in conceptualising a history of Black British Literature, both Victor Headley's Yardie (1992) and Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988) might be seen as descendents of Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, how specifically has Selvon's novel influenced these very different novels?
• What accounts for Philip Larkin's popularity as a 'national' poet, in your view?
  
• Compare Pat Barker's representation of a working-class community in Union Street with either Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) or Nell Dunn's Up the Junction (1963).
• In what ways might Sarah Kane's Blasted be seen as a contemporary instance of the modernist avant-garde?