Scandalous Fictions

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction: the Twentieth-Century Novel in the Public Sphere

   • Jago Morrison, Susan Watkins

   Pages 1-26

3. The ‘nameless shamelessness’ of Ulysses: Libel and the Law of Literature

   • Sean Latham

   Pages 27-47

4. ’The aristocracy of intellect’: Inversion and Inheritance in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness

   • Susan Watkins

   Pages 48-69

5. The Law and the Profits: the Case of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover

   • Fiona Becket

   Pages 70-82

6. ’You Reckon Folks Really Act Like That?’: Horror Films and the Work of Popular Culture in Richard Wright’s Native Son

   • James Smethurst

   Pages 83-98

7. Scandalous for being Scandalous: ‘monstrous huge fuck[s]’ and ‘slambanging big sodomies’ in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

   • R. J. Ellis

   Pages 99-116

8. Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People: the Novel and the Public Sphere

   • Jago Morrison

   Pages 117-135

9. ’Precious Gift/Piece of Shit’: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and the Revenge of History

   • Shailja Sharma

   Pages 136-149

10. Toni Morrison’s Beloved: the Scandal that Disturbed Domestic Tranquillity

    • Marilyn Sanders Mobley

    Pages 150-171

11. Helen Darville, The Hand that Signed the Paper: Who is ‘Helen Demidenko’?

    • Sue Vice

    Pages 172-186

12. J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace: Reading Race/Reading Scandal

    • Kai Easton

    Pages 187-205

13. Afterword

    • Jago Morrison, Susan Watkins

    Pages 206-208

14. Back Matter

    Pages 209-219

    PDF

This study re-examines the twentieth-century novel as a form shaped by its problematic, often scandalous relation to the public sphere. Discussing ten texts against the challenges of their milieus, it considers twentieth-century fiction as a tradition of transgression, perennially caught between license and licentiousness, erudition and sedition.

• David Herbert Lawrence
• fiction
• law
• novel
• British and Irish Literature

'Scandalous Fictions is a deliberately unsettling yet highly readable collection of essays. It asks readers to reconsider what they think they know about ten much-discussed texts, chosen precisely because they have been much discussed. Between them, these books have been accused of blasphemy, obscenity, imposture, libel, licentiousness, sedition, and racism; yet, until now, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the ways in which such literary scandals are produced. This important book offers fresh and exciting perspectives on the acts of public misreading, censorship, and appropriation which result in scandalous fictions.' - Faye Hammill, Senior Lecturer in English, Cardiff University, UK

'This stimulating collection of essays addresses a number of compelling questions about the relationship between fiction and the public sphere. Focusing on scandalous texts which have provoked public fury and in some cases legal action, the contributors explore the implications of the breaching of textual boundaries between the aesthetic and the religious, the literary and the juridical, the fictive and the pornographic. In its range and scope and its attention to transnational literature, Scandalous Fictions offers a timely reminder of the culturally productive power of this most hybrid of forms.' - Professor Clare Hanson, University of Southampton, UK

'The short, bold and powerfully written chapters raise a multitude of connections and questions which resonate at the end of the collection, beyond the novels discussed...an innovative and thought-provoking re-reading of many familiar texts.' Women: A Cultural Review

• University of Chichester, UK

  Jago Morrison

• School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

  Susan Watkins

FIONA BECKET Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Leeds University, UK KAI EASTON Currently Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in English, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa R.J. ELLIS Head of English and American Studies, University of Birmingham, UK SEAN LATHAM Associate Professor of English, University of Tulsa, USA MARILYN MOBLEY MCKENZIE Associate Provost for Education Programs and Associate Professor of English, George Mason University in Fairfax, USA SHAILJA SHARMA Associate Professor of English, DePaul University, USA JAMES SMETHURST Associate Professor, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA SUE VICE Professor of English Literature, University of Sheffield, UK.

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