Reading Graham Swift

by Tomasz Dobrogoszcz (Editor), Marta Goszczynska (Editor), Donald Kaczvinsky (Contribution by), Slawomir Konkol (Contribution by), Bozena Kucala (Contribution by)

Overview

This collection of essays on Graham Swift’s fiction brings together the perspectives of renowned Swift scholars from around the world. Authors look at the swift’s oeuvre from different interpretative angles, combining a variety of critical and theoretical approaches. This book covers all of Swift’s fiction, including his novels and short stories; special emphasis, however, is on his most recent books. By approaching Swift’s work from a number of perspectives, the volume offers a synthetic overview of his literary output. In particular, it searches for thematic and formal continuities between his early and more recent fiction, and attempts to emphasize its new developments and interests.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498569514
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	11/22/2019
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.36(w) x 9.15(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz is assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Łódź.

Marta Goszczyńska is assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Łódź.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz and Marta Goszczyńska

Part 1: Beginnings and Continuities

Chapter 1: Trauma and Confliction in The Sweet-Shop Owner and Waterland

Philip Tew

Chapter 2: Reticent Detecting: The Evolution of Swift’s (Un)Confessing Narrators

Anastasia Logotheti

Chapter 3: Masculinity as Failure: Male Characters in Learning to Swim and England and Other Stories

Katarzyna 'stalska

Part 2: Progressions and Evolutions

Chapter 4: Nostalgia, Sentiments, and Men in Out of This World

Katarzyna Więckowska

Chapter 5: The Father Delusion in Ever After

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz

Chapter 6: Filming the Unfilmable: Last Orders on Screen

Adam Sumera

Chapter 7: Re-Joycing Tomorrow: Graham Swift, Artificial Insemination, and the Question of Literary Paternity

Donald Kaczvinsky

Part 3: Recent Developments

Chapter 8: Forget ‘Green English Fields’: War(s) in Wish You Were Here

Catherine Pesso-Miquel

Chapter 9: Spectres of Silence in Wish You Were Here

Sławomir Konkol

Chapter 10: The England in Englandand Other Stories

David Malcolm

Chapter 11: Lost for Words: Narration, Language and Communication in England and Other Stories

Marta Goszczyńska

Chapter 12: ‘So How Did You Become a Writer?’: Metafictional Concerns in Mothering Sunday

Bożena Kucała

Editorial Reviews

Reading Graham Swift is a fresh and timely overview of Swift’s writing, offering numerous insightful readings and new interpretations of his work. Its coverage is comprehensive, its scope eclectic, and its publication attests not only to the international appeal of Swift’s fiction, but also to the vibrancy of debate on his work. This collection will add enormously to Swift’s critical reputation as one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years.

Daniel Lea

Over four decades Graham Swift, one of the finest novelists and short-story writers of his generation, has created an acclaimed body of work inhabited by seemingly ordinary people going about their ostensibly unremarkable lives. Quietly unassuming but beautifully wrought and profoundly revelatory, his literary oeuvre invites and rewards critical scrutiny, as this rich and compelling collection of scholarly essays amply demonstrates. The first book in English to be devoted to Swift’s work in more than a dozen years, this illuminating volume traces the author’s preoccupations and investments across the full range of his literary output, while paying particular attention to the as yet underexplored terrain of his more recent works. Scholars and students of this major writer and of contemporary British literature generally will find it an invaluable resource.

Stef Craps