Intersection of Class and Space in British Postwar Writing, The: Kitchen Sink Aesthetics - Softcover

Lee, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350193151 ISBN 13: 9781350193154

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024

Synopsis

Centering on the British kitchen sink realism movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, specifically its documentation of the built environment’s influence on class consciousness, this book highlights the settings of a variety of novels, plays, and films, turning to archival research to offer new ways of thinking about how spatial representation in cultural production sustains or intervenes in the process of social stratification. As a movement that used gritty, documentary-style depictions of space to highlight the complexities of working-class life, the period’s texts chronicled shifts in the social and topographic landscape while advancing new articulations of citizenship in response to the failures of post-war reconstruction. By exploring the impact of space on class, this book addresses the contention that critical discourse has overlooked the way the built environment informs class identity.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Lee is Assistant Professor of English at Texas State University, USA where he researches and teaches Post-WWII British literature, social class and labour history. He has published on writers such as Colin MacInnes, Shelagh Delaney, John Osborne and Pat Barker, and on topics such as immigration, nationalism and cultural identity.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350193151
• ISBN 13: 9781350193154
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236