Literature of the 1990s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The Individual

Placing literary creativity within a changing cultural and political context that saw the end of Margaret Thatcher and rise of New Labour, this book offers fresh interpretations of mainstream and marginal works from all parts of Britain. Based on a framework of thematically-structured accounts, the individual chapters cover national identity, ethnicity, sexuality, class, celebrity culture, history and fantasy in literature from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. It offers its readers a comprehensive view of the changing and challenging literary landscape in this period, critically examining the fiction, poetry and drama as well as representative films, art and music. Placed within the broader context of a transformative political and cultural environment that included Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, Damian Hirst and Princess Diana, the book captures the energetic and sometimes provocative experimentation that typified the final decade of the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Interpreting New Labour's Political Discourse on the Northern Ireland Peace Process

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Interpretive Approach ◽  
Key Variables ◽  
Irish Question

New Labour‟s superintendence of the Northern Ireland peace process has re-opened debate about the party‟s stance on the “Irish question”. While some commentators hold the view that it remains ideologically wedded to the nationalist goal of Irish unity, it could be argued that Labour‟s Northern Ireland policy has been characterised by an ambivalent non-interventionist approach. The “peace strategy” pursued by Tony Blair‟s three administrations between 1997 and 2007 is examined in light of the political discourse articulated by key actors within New Labour itself. Moreover, the interpretive approach in British political science is utilised to illuminate key variables, such as ideology and values, driving the party‟s view on sovereignty in the United Kingdom more broadly. In applying this analytical framework the article explains how New Labour‟s policy towards Northern Ireland underwent significant adaptation under Blair‟s leadership and why it finally achieved its overarching objective of consigning the violent conflict to atrophy.

scholarly journals NOMADIC PICTURE OF THE WORLD IN THE NOVEL OF S.SANBAEV “WHITE ARUANA”

2020 ◽  
pp. 489-495
Author(s):  
S. Ananyeva ◽  
◽  
O. Арукенова ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gradual Decline ◽  
The World ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Great Culture ◽  
The Individual

Myths, tales and legends have been referencing readers of S. Sanjeev's prose to the ancient times of the Great Steppe, despite the fact that the action of fiction take place in the twentieth century. The story of Satimzhan Sanbaev «White Aruana», which has become the hallmark of the Kazakh writer's prose, is devoted to the urgent topic «man and nature». The motives of freedom, longing for the lost great past, the indestructible call of the Motherland are central to the story. Formation of the national identity of the Kazakh people is mainly based on works imprinted in oral folklore. The problem of “man and nature” is solved by the author in terms of the increased responsibility of the inhabitants of the planet Earth for the world. The narrator reinforces mythology, psychological overtones, and tragedy against the background of an ordinary household plot. The life of the inhabitant of steppe has depicted in the fate of one family. This skill has become a peculiarity of the style of the Kazakh prose writer. The failures of the protagonist Myrzagali are perceived as a consequence of the gradual decline of the ancient and great culture of nomadism, the cosmos of Tenriism. The loneliness of the individual in nomadic culture is determined by nature, living conditions, infinity and boundless vastness of the steppe, in which the problem of «man and space» is relevant in the twenty-first century.

Faeries, Aliens, and Leviathans: Science and Fantasy in Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-303
Author(s):  
Richard Howard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Irish Studies ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Unexplored Area ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Cultural Movement

Irish science fiction is a relatively unexplored area for Irish Studies, a situation partially rectified by the publication of Jack Fennell's Irish Science Fiction in 2014. This article aims to continue the conversation begun by Fennell's intervention by analysing the work of Belfast science fiction author Ian McDonald, in particular King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991), the first novel in what McDonald calls his Irish trilogy. The article explores how McDonald's text interrogates the intersection between science, politics, and religion, as well as the cultural movement that was informing a growing sense of a continuous Irish national identity. It draws from the discipline of Science Studies, in particular the work of Nicholas Whyte, who writes of the ways in which science and colonialism interacted in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland.

Modernism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Squires
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Dimensional Spectrum ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rule Out

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.

Gewalt und Kommunikation

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Jens Bonnemann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Normal Case ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Philosophy Of Dialogue ◽  
The Individual

In ethics, when discussing problems of justice and a just social existence one question arises obviously: What is the normal case of the relation between I and you we start from? In moral philosophy, each position includes basic socio-anthropological convictions in that we understand the other, for example, primarily as competitor in the fight for essential resources or as a partner in communication. Thus, it is not the human being as isolated individual, or as specimen of the human species or socialised member of a historical society what needs to be understood. Instead, the individual in its relation to the other or others has been studied in phenomenology and the philosophy of dialogue of the twentieth century. In the following essay I focus on Martin Buber’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories of intersubjectivity which I use in order to explore the meaning of recognition and disrespect for an individual. They offer a valuable contribution to questions of practical philosophy and the socio-philosophical diagnosis of our time.

Limits to Dominance?

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Capital Building ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Very High ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Policy Vision

This chapter compares the leadership capital of two long-serving UK prime ministers: Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, treble election winners who held office for a decade. Mapping their capital over time reveals two very different patterns. Thatcher began with low levels of capital, building to a mid-term high and final fragile dominance, though her capital fell between elections. Blair possessed very high levels from the outset that gradually declined in a more conventional pattern. Both benefited from electoral dominance and a divided opposition, Thatcher’s strength lay in her policy vision while Blair’s stemmed from his popularity and communication skills. The LCI reveals that both prime ministers were successful without being popular, sustained in office by the electoral system. Towards the end of their tenures, both leaders’ continued dominance masked fragility, ousted when unrest in their parties and policy unpopularity eroded their capital.

Howling “A Hot Time”: The Paradoxical Anthem of the Progressive Age

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
DEIRDRE O'CONNELL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
Time Served ◽  
Musical Traditions

This study investigates the shifting meanings invested in the ragtime song “A Hot Time in the Old Time, Tonight” at the turn of the twentieth century. Complicating the tune's place in the canon of military, political, and national anthems was its associations with “vice,” black culture, and white supremacy. By mapping the ritual and representational uses of the song, this investigation demonstrates how “A Hot Time” served paradoxical functions that simultaneously affirmed and unsettled American exceptionalism. In doing so, this article traces the processes of obfuscation whereby black musical traditions and white supremacy defined America's distinctive national identity.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

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