Radford, A. (2021) No country for old maids? Housing Ivy Compton-Burnett’s mid-century fiction. In: Radford, A. and Van Hove, H. (eds.) British Experimental Women's Fiction, 1945-1975: Slipping Through the Labels. Palgrave Macmillan: London, pp. 127-151. ISBN 9783030727659 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-72766-6_6)
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Publisher's URL: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030727659
Abstract
This chapter examines the challenges and pleasures of reading the unsentimental and stubbornly strange post-1945 fiction of Ivy Compton-Burnett. While numerous journalists and scholars have interpreted her writing as having very few obvious literary ancestors or successors, Radford proposes that Compton-Burnett provides a radical reimagining of the “country-house novel”, synonymous with male authors like Henry James, E. M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford and Evelyn Waugh. Radford uses her 1947 novel Manservant and Maidservant to scrutinize Compton-Burnett’s distinctive contribution to this “country-house” tradition, especially her satirical debunking of post-war patriarchal values and nostalgic fantasies of Englishness.
| Item Type: | Book Sections |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | eBook ISBN: 9783030727666. |
| Status: | Published |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Radford, Dr Andrew |
| Authors: | Radford, A. |
| College/School: | College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature |
| Research Group: | Modernism and Contemporary Literature |
| Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan |
| ISBN: | 9783030727659 |
| Published Online: | 24 August 2021 |
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