George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) remains a book of the moment. This Companion builds on successive waves of generational inheritance and debate in the novel's reception by asking new questions about how and why Nineteen Eighty-Four was written, what it means, and why it matters. Chapters on a selection of the novel's interpretative contexts, the literary histories from which it is inseparable, the urgent questions it raises, and the impact it has had on other kinds of media, ranging from radio to video games, open up the conversation in an expansive way. Established concerns (e.g. Orwell's attitude to the working class, his anxieties about the socio-political compartmentalization of the post-war world) are presented alongside newer ones (e.g. his views on evil, and the influence of Nineteen Eighty-Four on comics). Individual essays help us see in new ways how Orwell's most famous work continues to be a novel for our times.
| ISBN: | 9781108841092 |
| Publication date: | 1st October 2020 |
| Author: | Nathan University of Birmingham Waddell |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 280 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Companions to Literature |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Literary companions, book reviews and guides Literary essays Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Literary theory |