The article considers the highly critical handling of the British brand of messianism in Graham Swift’s novel Waterland (1983) in the light of Jacques Lacan’s concept of the phallus. The issue is approached through the figure of the narrator’s half-brother, spawned to be the saviour of the world and the narrator’s attitude towards promises of a grand future, an epitome of Graham Swift’s overall distrust of totalising narratives. The desire for a complete and final explanation is shown to be as inescapable as it is impossible to fulfil.
The paper examines, with reference to Swift’s later novels (The Light of Day, Tomorrow, Wish You Were Here), the function of his consistently employed strategies which, rather than undermine, reinforce the writer’s commitment to realism and give his narratives additional power and depth. His characters are mostly ordinary people, yet their lives are shaped or changed by a larger historical context or by dramatic events beyond their control, and often, beyond their understanding. Swift’s claim that literature brings us into contact with fire, yet we do not get burned, echoes Aristotle’s notion of catharsis. To make this contact with fire possible, Swift selects easily recognizable ordinary areas of shared human experience, which bring the reader close to the protagonist, and simultaneously establish distance by deliberate indeterminacies and refusal to provide disambiguation. A paradoxical coexistence of identification with characters and an underlying sense of suspicion on the part of the reader produce a unique version of contemporary realistic narrative with its ethical and aesthetic commitment.
The article is a review of Here We Are, the latest novel by contemporary English novelist Graham Swift, published in the spring of 2020. The text is considered in the context of the author’s earlier work, which the often self-reflexive narrative references at a number of points. The author’s use of understatement and the motif of parenthood also receive the reviewer’s attention.
The article is a review of Here We Are, the latest novel by contemporary English novelist Graham Swift, published in the spring of 2020. The text is considered in the context of the author’s earlier work, which the often self-reflexive narrative references at a number of points. The author’s use of understatement and the motif of parenthood also receive the reviewer’s attention.
The article considers the highly critical handling of the British brand of messianism in Graham Swift’s novel Waterland (1983) in the light of Jacques Lacan’s concept of the phallus. The issue is approached through the figure of the narrator’s half-brother, spawned to be the saviour of the world and the narrator’s attitude towards promises of a grand future, an epitome of Graham Swift’s overall distrust of totalising narratives. The desire for a complete and final explanation is shown to be as inescapable as it is impossible to fulfil.
The article considers the highly critical handling of the British brand of messianism in Graham Swift’s novel Waterland (1983) in the light of Jacques Lacan’s concept of the phallus. The issue is approached through the figure of the narrator’s half-brother, spawned to be the saviour of the world and the narrator’s attitude towards promises of a grand future, an epitome of Graham Swift’s overall distrust of totalising narratives. The desire for a complete and final explanation is shown to be as inescapable as it is impossible to fulfil.
This article employs the concepts of spectres and haunting to analyse Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday: A Romance (2016) as a commentary on (literary) history and its economy of spectres. Referring to Jacques Derrida’s notions of haunting, inheritance, and time, I focus on the spectres of literary modernism and the First World War to explore the ways in which Swift’s novella questions the canonical representation of modernism and revises the conventional means of writing about the past, memory, and history. The analysis of Mothering Sunday approaches the spectre as a figure of repressed otherness and a reminder of what has been excluded or silenced, so as to trace some of the ghosts that appear in the book and to underline its melancholic, spectral character. Situating Swift’s novella within the context of contemporary cultural criticism, I propose to see it as a sign of a larger cultural and critical turn, where spectres have been assimilated into the structure of the everyday and where the experience of haunting has become a major expression of the present condition.
This article employs the concepts of spectres and haunting to analyse Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday: A Romance (2016) as a commentary on (literary) history and its economy of spectres. Referring to Jacques Derrida’s notions of haunting, inheritance, and time, I focus on the spectres of literary modernism and the First World War to explore the ways in which Swift’s novella questions the canonical representation of modernism and revises the conventional means of writing about the past, memory, and history. The analysis of Mothering Sunday approaches the spectre as a figure of repressed otherness and a reminder of what has been excluded or silenced, so as to trace some of the ghosts that appear in the book and to underline its melancholic, spectral character. Situating Swift’s novella within the context of contemporary cultural criticism, I propose to see it as a sign of a larger cultural and critical turn, where spectres have been assimilated into the structure of the everyday and where the experience of haunting has become a major expression of the present condition.
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