Analyzing Contemporary Britain: Literary and Cultural Studies

Author: Mao Sihui, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Time: 2003-01-01
Features: The study of Britain—its history, geography, politics, economy, language, literature, and culture—has been conducted both in and outside the classroom of English in China for many decades and even centuries. But since the late 1980s, British Studies as a growing and dynamic interdisciplinary subject has been going through drastic changes, powerfully moving beyond a study of mainly canonical masterpieces. Indeed, the complex processes of glocalisation (globalisation and localisation) of the economy, of images, of discourses, and of risks and problems have given rise to an urgent need to cross geographical, national, political, and cultural as well as disciplinary boundaries. This book features 25 essays and reflections on British (mainly contemporary) literary and cultural texts, engaging a host of critical perspectives in gender, postcolonial, humanistic, discourse, and cultural studies. They are organized into four parts, “Drama of Shakespeare and Beyond,” “Revisiting British Poetic Kingdom,” “Rereading Tales of Britain,” and “Globalizing Culture and British Cinema.” Generally or specifically, these essays and reflections address issues such as class, gender, ethnicity, orientalism, aesthetic, social, political, and cultural identity, indicating the complexity of contemporary debates over British written and visual constructions of the Other as well as themselves.