Abstraction in Post-War British Literature 1945-1980

Abstract

This book traces a line of literary experimentation in post-war British literature that was prompted by the aesthetic, philosophical, and theoretical demands of abstraction. Spanning the period 1945 to 1980, it observes the ways in which certain aesthetic advancements initiated new forms of literary expression to posit a new genealogy of interdisciplinary practice in Britain. It is the first sustained chronological study to consider the ways in which a select number of British poets, authors, and critics challenged the received views of their post-war moment in the discovery of the imaginative and idealizing potential of abstraction. At a time in which Britain became conscious of its evolving identity within an increasingly globalized context, this study accounts for the range of Continental and Transatlantic influences in order to more accurately locate the networks at play. Exploring the contributions made by individuals, such as Herbert Read, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Christine Brooke-Rose, as well as by groups of practitioners, such as the British concrete poetry movement, small press initiatives, and Art & Language, and bringing a wide range of previously unexplored archival material into the public domain, this book offers a comprehensive account of the evolving status of abstraction across cultural, institutional, and literary contexts. The discussions build a vision of an era that increasingly jettisons the predetermined critical lexicon of abstraction to generate works of a more pragmatic abstract inspiration: the spatial demands of concrete poetry, language as medium in the conceptual artwork, the absence of linear plot in the new novel. The post-war period, this book suggests, was witness to the intensification of the meeting between spatiality and visuality in literature.