van Lopik, A.R.;
(2011)
Ivy Compton-Burnett and the inter-war novel.
Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).
Abstract
Ivy Compton-Burnett's inter-war novels have rarely been closely considered in relation to that period's dominant sociocultural paradigms. Counteracting the existing critical tendency to consider her work as eccentric and a-historical, this thesis situates the novels within a succession of aesthetic, political, and social discourses in order to foreground their radical reshaping of prevailing modes of thought and expression. Compton-Burnett's mordant chronicles of family life typify inter-war literary culture's rejection of its Victorian and Edwardian heritage and its critique of their lingering post-war presence through an examination of apparently defunct conservative and increasingly nostalgic constructions of individual and national identity. The thesis is constructed in two parts; the first considering the broad cultural positioning of her work, the second focussing more closely upon its interaction with specific literary, commercial, and sociological models. Beginning with Compton-Burnett's juvenile novel Dolores, I will consider the relation between her early education and reading and the evolution of her mature literary style by tracing an emergent comic subversion of the melodramatic plots of nineteenth-century fiction which culminated in an idiosyncratic form of neo-Victorianism. The following chapter examines her work's early critical reception, its alignment with certain precepts of modernist form associated with a Post-Impressionist Bloomsbury aesthetic, and the adumbration of a specifically 'high-brow' identity. Building upon this foundation, the subsequent chapters consider Compton-Burnett's work thematically in terms of: late twenties and early thirties constructions of gender and sexuality in a climate of censorship and coincident taste for literary deviance; the Golden Age detective novel and psychological investigations of violence and criminality; and the English country house as a site of cultural and historical fragmentation. Together, these chapters reconstruct an essentially avant-garde identity which the author's perceived focus upon middle-class domesticity, her longevity and incremental inscription as a minor British institution have in recent decades eroded.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Title: | Ivy Compton-Burnett and the inter-war novel |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Permission for digitisation not received |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of English Lang and Literature |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1331995 |
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