Promise of Welfare in the Postwar British and Anglophone Novel - States of Repair

A study of the literature of the Second World War and its aftermath, focusing on the welfare state and wartime visions of rebuilding Britain.

List of contents

• Introduction: States of Repair


• PART I: CRADLE


• 1: A Room of One's Own? Postwar Modernism and the Reconstructive Imagination


• 2: "Nowhere's Safe": Angry Young Women and Communal Betrayal


• 3: Unhomely Empire: Seeking Hospitality in Windrush Britain


• Interlude: Failed Utopias, or the Beginning of the End


• PART II: GRAVE


• 4: Empty Places: Unpropertied Intimacy and Queer History


• 5: Oasis Societies: Global Welfare and the Romance of Care


• 6: Institutional Life: Infrastructural Interiority as Postwar Feeling


• Coda: A Hostile Environment


• Bibliography

About the author

Kelly M. Rich is Associate Professor of English at Harvard University.

Summary

A study of the literature of the Second World War and its aftermath, focusing on the welfare state and wartime visions of rebuilding Britain.

Additional text

The Promise of Welfare in the Postwar British and Anglophone Novel: States of Repair is a refreshing and thought-provoking study... Rich takes a two-pronged approach that emphasizes, through lively close readings and rigorous historical framing, how the novels under consideration revive the promises inherent in the creation of the welfare state, particularly the promises of care and repair, the fulfilment of which she argues always remains ultimately impossible... [Her readings] are bolstered impressively by rigorous historical research as well as wide reading throughout contemporary British fiction, so that surprising connections and points of contrast emerge across post-war time and space.

Product details

• Authors: Dr Kelly M. (Associate Professor of English Rich, Kelly M. Rich, Kelly M. (Associate Professor of English Rich
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 10.08.2023
• EAN: 9780192893437
• ISBN: 978-0-19-289343-7
• No. of pages: 290
• Series: Oxford Mid-Century Studies Series
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; European History, HISTORY / Military / General, HISTORY / Europe / General, military history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Second World War, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Modern warfare, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, c 1939 to c 1945 (including WW2), Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General