Understanding Contemporary British Literature
1 total work
Suggesting that the literary world is just beginning to realize the extent of Anthony Powell's achievements, Nicholas Birns provides a fresh examination of the British writer's career and growing reputation in this introduction to his work. Birns takes a global view of Powell's corpus, situating his works in context and explaining his place among Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Henry Green, in the second generation of British modernists. Birns adds to the understanding of how Powell and his compatriots pioneered a "next wave" modernism in which experimentation and traditional narrative combined in a sustainable mode. Birns offers readings of Powell's entire oeuvre, including the novels Afternoon Men, Venusberg, and The Fisher King, and his journals, which appeared in print between 1995 and 1997. Looking especially closely at A Dance to the Music of Time, the twelve-volume sequence of novels that is Powell's masterpiece, Birns sets the series in its social and historical context, emphasizing the role that both world wars and the cold war played in Powell's life and writing. He makes a particular study of the novel's dominating force - the arrogant, opportunistic Widmerpool, a socia