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Experimentation with the speech of characters has been hailed by Gérard Genette as \"one of the main paths of emancipation in the modern novel.\" Dialogue as a stylistic and narrative device is a key feature in the development of the novel as a genre, yet it is also a phenomenon little acknowledged or explored in the critical literature.Fictional Dialoguedemonstrates the richness and versatility of dialogue as a narrative technique in twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels by focusing on extended extracts and sequences of utterances. It also examines how different versions of dialogue may help to normalize or idealize certain patterns and practices, thereby excluding alternative possibilities or eliding \"unevenness\" and differences. Bronwen Thomas, by bringing together theories and models of fictional dialogue from a wide range of disciplines and intellectual traditions, shows how the subject raises profound questions concerning our understanding of narrative and human communication. The first study of its kind to combine literary and narratological analysis with reference to linguistic terms and models, Bakhtinian theory, cultural history, media theory, and cognitive approaches, this book is also the first to focus in depth on the dialogue novel in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and to bring together examples of dialogue from literature, popular fiction, and nonlinear narratives. Beyond critiquing existing methods of analysis, it outlines a promising new method for analyzing fictional dialogue.

Combining original historical research with literary analysis, Adam Barrows takes a provocative look at the creation of world standard time in 1884 and rethinks the significance of this remarkable moment in modernism for both the processes of imperialism and for modern literature. As representatives from twenty-four nations argued over adopting the Prime Meridian, and thereby measuring time in relation to Greenwich, England, writers began experimenting with new ways of representing human temporality. Barrows finds this experimentation in works as varied as Victorian adventure novels, high modernist texts, and South Asian novels—including the work of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, H. Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad. Demonstrating the investment of modernist writing in the problems of geopolitics and in the public discourse of time, Barrows argues that it is possible, and productive, to rethink the politics of modernism through the politics of time.

Focusing on late nineteenth- and twentieth-century stories of detection, policing, and espionage by British and South Asian writers, Yumna Siddiqi presents an original and compelling exploration of the cultural anxieties created by imperialism. She suggests that while colonial writers use narratives of intrigue to endorse imperial rule, postcolonial writers turn the generic conventions and topography of the fiction of intrigue on its head, launching a critique of imperial power that makes the repressive and emancipatory impulses of postcolonial modernity visible. Siddiqi devotes the first part of her book to the colonial fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan, in which the British regime's preoccupation with maintaining power found its voice. The rationalization of difference, pronouncedly expressed through the genre's strategies of representation and narrative resolution, helped to reinforce domination and, in some cases, allay fears concerning the loss of colonial power. In the second part, Siddiqi argues that late twentieth-century South Asian writers also underscore the state's insecurities, but unlike British imperial writers, they take a critical view of the state's authoritarian tendencies. Such writers as Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie use the conventions of detective and spy fiction in creative ways to explore the coercive actions of the postcolonial state and the power dynamics of a postcolonial New Empire. Drawing on the work of leading theorists of imperialism such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and the Subaltern Studies historians, Siddiqi reveals how British writers express the anxious workings of a will to maintain imperial power in their writing. She also illuminates the ways South Asian writers portray the paradoxes of postcolonial modernity and trace the ruses and uses of reason in a world where the modern marks a horizon not only of hope but also of economic, military, and ecological disaster.

This is the first systematic study to trace the way representations of 'Germanness' in modernist British literature from 1890 to 1950 contributed to the development of English identity. Petra Rau examines the shift in attitudes towards Germany and Germans, from suspicious competitiveness in the late Victorian period to the aggressive hostility of the First World War and the curious inconsistencies of the 1930s and 1940s. These shifts were no simple response to political change but the result of an anxious negotiation of modernity in which specific aspects of Englishness were projected onto representations of Germans and Germany in English literature and culture. While this incisive argument clarifies and deepens our understanding of cultural and national politics in the first half of the twentieth century, it also complicates current debates surrounding race and 'otherness' in cultural studies. Authors discussed include major figures such as Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Ford, Forster and Bowen, as well as popular or less familiar writers such as Saki, Graham Greene, and Stevie Smith. Accessibly written and convincingly argued, Rau's study will not only be an important book for scholars but will serve as a valuable guide to undergraduates working in modernism, literary history, and European cultural relations.

Nick Bentley provides an introduction to the major novelists and the main themes in narrative fiction over the last 35 years. He offers a critical discussion of important debates in contemporary fiction engaging with concepts such as postmodernism; the impact of feminism and gender in literary studies; the rise of postcolonial literary theory; and the place of fiction within broader debates in contemporary culture. Bentley offers thought-provoking analysis of a range of British writers including Martin Amis, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Ian McEwan, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

This book looks at a wide range of fiction and film texts, from the 1950s to the present, in order to analyse the ways in which masculinity has been represented in popular culture in Britain and the United States. It covers numerous genres, including spy fiction, science fiction, the Western and police thrillers. Each chapter focuses on key forms of masculinity found in each genre, such as the 'double agent', the 'rogue cop' and the 'citizen-soldier'.Brian Baker takes a broad, contextual approach, placing a detailed discussion of key texts and issues concerning masculinity in their historical and cultural context. Written in a clear, accessible way, it explores the changing representation of men over the last fifty years.

Illuminating a powerful intersection between popular culture and global politics,Spies and Holy Warsdraws on a sampling of more than eight hundred British and American thrillers that are propelled by the theme ofjihad-an Islamic holy war or crusade against the West. Published over the past century, the books in this expansive study encompass spy novels and crime fiction, illustrating new connections between these genres and Western imperialism. Demonstrating the social implications of the popularity of such books, Reeva Spector Simon covers how the Middle Eastern villain evolved from being the malleable victim before World War II to the international, techno-savvy figure in today's crime novels. She explores the impact of James Bond, pulp fiction, and comic books and also analyzes the ways in which world events shaped the genre, particularly in recent years. Worldwide terrorism and economic domination prevail as the most common sources of narrative tension in these works, while military \"tech novels\" restored the prestige of the American hero in the wake of post-Vietnam skepticism. Moving beyond stereotypes, Simon examines the relationships between publishing trends, political trends, and popular culture at large-giving voice to the previously unexamined truths that emerge from these provocative page-turners.

Anxieties about embodiment and posthumanism have always found an outlet in the science fiction of the day. In Bodies of Tomorrow , Sherryl Vint argues for a new model of an ethical and embodied posthuman subject through close readings of the works of Gwyneth Jones, Octavia Butler, Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, and other science fiction authors. Vint’s discussion is firmly contextualized by discussions of contemporary technoscience, specifically genetics and information technology, and the implications of this technology for the way we consider human subjectivity. Engaging with theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Anne Balsamo, N. Katherine Hayles, and Douglas Kellner, Bodies of Tomorrow argues for the importance of challenging visions of humanity in the future that overlook our responsibility as embodied beings connected to a material world. If we are to understand the post-human subject, then we must acknowledge our embodied connection to the world around us and the value of our multiple subjective responses to it. Vint’s study thus encourages a move from the common liberal humanist approach to posthuman theory toward what she calls ‘embodied posthumanism.’ This timely work of science fiction criticism will prove fascinating to cultural theorists, philosophers, and literary scholars alike, as well as anyone concerned with the ethics of posthumanism.