This chapter explores the writing of Andrew O’Haganfrom his non-fictional beginnings in the late-1990sto his most recent published novel – TheIlluminations (2015). The chapter follows the samechronological format established by the previousrevealing two key intertwined concerns underpinningO’Hagan’s writing. These are a concern with thenature of contemporary celebrity as it relates tothe postmodern commodification of selfhood, and thetentacular grip that the past holds on the present,especially in the context of Scottish nationalism.The idea of a missing, or corrupted core, unitesboth these themes and focuses O’Hagan’s writinground a consideration of the weight and freight ofrealness.

This chapter establishes the validity of a comparison between works belonging to seemingly different genres. "Postmemory" describes the relationship that the "generation after" bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before to experiences they "remember" only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. Through their respective mnemonic work, both Dalila Kerchouche's and Thierry Galdeano's narrators seek to humanize the father and with him the collectivity he represents, whether harki or pied noir. Galdeano's overall intent is to pay tribute to the long sufferings of the harkis in France and give them a visible platform to claim recognition for their sacrifices. Kerchouche's reluctance to bring in pied noir memories of the Algerian War and expatriation may well be in part a firm refusal to compromise with pied noir ideology and its belief in an idealized colonial society.

Quiet novels privilege the experience of men like Jacob and look at the relative value and variety of quiet states that philosophy has valued for centuries. The study of the quiet novel has something important to say about the production and distribution of literary fiction. Contrasting literary and philosophical oppositions of quiet and loud continued throughout the postmodern era and into the early twenty-first century. This chapter explores this dynamic at a greater length, by arguing that noise is often favoured in situations that seem to be unprecedented, with the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 as representative. The residual association of quiet with silence is an important factor in the former's continued association with inaction. The chapter argues that the quiet novel prioritises a mode of reflection and meditation that has always existed at the margins of American culture.

This chapter discusses novels of cognition, a term intended to connect the discussion of a quiet aesthetic with early twenty-first century debates about the place of cognitive approaches within literary studies. On a cursory level, novels of cognition narrate the discoveries of cognitive science. Taking The Echo Maker and American Genius; a comedy as representative of the trend's diversity, the author reads the novel of cognition as a quiet contemporary American form. With consciousness portrayed 'from the inside out', The Echo Maker reaches its noisiest point as Richard Powers frames Capgras as a metaphor for the fragmented, anxious and dissonant experience of all contemporary life. Importantly, the characters of The Echo Maker live in a quiet location where they can avoid national event. A city in decline, Kearney is quiet despite being urban: even its residents describe the city as a 'vacant, floating terrain in the dead center of nowhere'.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book examines the literary, artistic and biographical afterlives in England of the great sixteenth-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, from before his death to the end of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the literary impact of Armida's arrival in the poem, examining how the poets Abraham Fraunce and Samuel Daniel both responded to canto IV of Tasso's poem. The book also examines the numerous English poetic responses in the first half of the 1590s to the celebrated song from the amorous episode. It analyses the impact in England of visual depictions of scenes from Tasso's romantic episodes, featuring both Rinaldo and Armida and the almost equally popular Tancredi and Erminia, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book then examines the idiosyncratic interpretation, by Paolo Rolli, of a different romantic episode in Tasso.

The earliest sustained attention to Tasso's epic in English letters predates Spenser's imitations, however, and it is noteworthy that the Italian poem was almost immediately granted a status comparable to the ancient epics of Greece and Rome. There are over eighty separate quotations from Gerusalemme liberata in the handbook together constituting well over 300 lines of Torquato Tasso's epic verse. Frances Yates has demonstrated that the most prominent teacher of Italian in Elizabethan England was a member of Wriothesley's household in 1594. The early English fascination with the figure of Armida was mirrored in the initial French reception of Tasso's poem. An accurate translation of Joulet's prose by Robert Tofte, the Italianate poet and translator of both Boiardo and Ariosto, survives in a manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where it is entitled the 'Romance of Armide'.

This chapter explores the writing of Ali Smith from thelate 1990s to the publication of How to be Both(2014). It concentrates primarily on her novels andshort stories, though some attention is paid to heroccasional writings. The chapter is broken into twobroad generic sections, the first addressing hershort stories together, the second her novels inchronological order. Each text is given closeanalytical study through formal, stylistic, andthematic critique, building to an overview of anauthor whose moral sense of duty for the care of theother is paradoxically set against her confusion atthe impenetrability of that other’s being.

This chapter traces the development of Jon McGregor’swriting up to the publication of his collection ofshort stories This Isn’t the Sort of Thing thatHappens to Someone Like You (2012). It establishesMcGregor’s deep interest in the resonance of theeveryday and the overlooked, and examines theethical importance of mutual recognition and theimport of the other in his writing. McGregor’sfiction always demands the gaze of an oftendisinterested world both as an act of charity, andas a statement of human connectedness.

This chapter addresses Xavier Leherpeur's concerns and analyzes whether or not television comedies do serve the cause of the immigrants and people linked to immigration. It focuses on what strategies are used to tackle the issue, and finally how they contribute to the representation of minorities on the Paysage Audiovisuel Français (PAF). The chapter introduces the production and reception contexts of the TV series and explores why choosing comedy increases the representativeness of minorities. It also focuses on the aesthetic strategies deployed to represent children of immigrants and their universe and how these strategies transform the spectator's gaze. The chapter examines the strengths and limitations of the political and aesthetic strategies at stake and repositions them within the relevant televisual context. French television culture is very important when it comes to how immigrants and banlieue residents are represented in the media.

This introduction outlines the critical aims of thestudy, identifying the authors covered and placingthem within the context of post-millennial writingin Britain. It also centrally addresses the problemsinvolved in practising literary criticism on verycontemporary material, and contextualises debatesaround the end of the postmodern and its aftermath.It seeks to establish (and justify) a criticalmethodology that eschews broad synopticism in favourof close attentiveness to the reflections andrefractions of one author beside another. It alsointroduces the themes of Materiality, Connectivity,and Authenticity that emerge repeatedly in theanalyses that follow.