Archipelagic Modernism ─ Literature in the Irish and British Isles, 1890-1970

Offers a new archipelagic history of twentieth-century literature in Britain and Ireland

Archipelagic Modernism examines the anglophone literatures of the archipelago from 1890 to 1970 for what they tell us about changing identities, geographies, and ecologies. The book argues that these literatures constitute an important resource for how we might begin to think about alternative political geographies, and alternative practices of belonging to place and environment. From the height of the British Empire in 1890, to the increasing sense by 1970 of the imminent'break-up' of Britain, 'archipelagic modernism' turned to the 'peripheral' spaces of islands, coastlines, and the sea to re-invent the Irish and British archipelago as a plural and connective space.

Key Features:

Questions established terms such as 'Modernism' or 'the Angry Young Men' and explores new terms such as 'critical realism' and literary developments such as 'the Scottish New Wave'
Takes the study of 20th-century literature into the 21st century providing a single volume treatment of the distinct national literary traditions of the British Isles
Provides students with a provocative revisionist approach and in-depth coverage

John Brannigan is senior lecturer in the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin. His books includeRace in Modern Irish Literature and Culture (2009), Pat Barker (2005),Orwell to the Present: Literature in England, 1945-2000 (2003), Literature, Culture and Society in PostwarEngland, 1945-1965 (2002), and Brendan Behan: Cultural Nationalism and the Revisionist Writer(2002). He is the current editor of the Irish University Review.