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Modern John Buchan: A Critical Introduction
Author: Nathan Waddell
Date Of Publication: Nov 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1370-9
Isbn: 1-4438-1370-2
This book offers an introduction to the breadth and diversity of the literary and non-literary work of John Buchan (1875–1940). It stakes a claim for him as an engaged interpreter of twentieth-century modernity, and provides evaluative readings of his output. In addition to demonstrating how Buchan’s work complicates the reductive view of early twentieth-century literature as neatly cordoned-off into “low” and “high” forms of production, this book discusses his theories of empire and imperialism, his account of historiography, and his response to the First World War. In addition to his many roles as a journalist, propagandist, war reporter, editor, civil servant, and statesman, Buchan was a committed literary critic, philosopher, and writer of history. This book explores the many connections between his work and such modernists as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, D. H. Lawrence, and Wyndham Lewis, and it situates Buchan as an intellectual figure who provided a distinctive set of readings of his modern times. Running throughout is a consideration of Buchan’s fascination with binaries, doubles, and duality, which his work variously upholds and investigates. It ends with a discussion of Buchan’s most famous work—The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)—in relation to paranoia and pathology.
Nathan Waddell is a doctoral candidate at the University of Birmingham. He has published articles on literary modernism and is co-editing a forthcoming volume of essays entitled Wyndham Lewis and the Cultures of Modernity (Ashgate).
He gives his subject measured and detailed attention, ensuring a balanced and authoritative approach that consolidates Buchan studies into an accepted discipline within literature and history. I envisage this book being required reading on any of the many undergraduate courses studying Buchan, and it will become a necessary part of the corpus of criticism on Buchan’s work.
—Kate Macdonald, University of Ghent, Belgium Waddell presents a lucid introduction to Buchan’s writings, while at the same time presenting an original and persuasive thesis: that Buchan can and should be read in the company of his modern contemporaries, not as a “modernist” novelist, but as an identifiably modern writer whose fictions demonstrate his awareness of and reaction to the aesthetic and political currents of his day. —Scott Klein, Wake Forest University, USA He has clearly done a lot of reading and thinking and his book is a welcome addition to Buchan studies – a piece of lit crit written lucidly and full of good sense. He has a fresh angle on Buchan’s response to modernity and I like the way he has captured the richness and complexity of Buchan’s writing. —Andrew Lownie, author of John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier
Price Uk Gbp: 34.99
Price Us Usd: 52.99
Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)
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