HI SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR CENTRE FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION M. A. Part-II : English Semester-IV : Paper G1 E5 Special Author : Kingsley Amis Semester-IV : Paper C-10 Critical Theory-II (Academic Year 2019-20 onwards) KJ M. A. Part-II English Paper G1 E5 Special Author : Kingsley Amis Unit-1 Lucky Jim (1954) Contents 1.0 Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Chapter-wise Summary of Lucky Jim 1.3 Lucky Jim as a Campus Novel 1.4 Check Your Progress 1.5 Glossary and Notes 1.6 Exercises 1.7 References to Further Study 1.0 Objectives: After studying this Unit, you will be able to: 1. Introduce the modern trends in Modern and Post-modern British Novel. 2. Understand the contribution of Kingsley Amis as an eminent Modern novelist. 3. Understand features of a Campus novel. 4. Understand the Angry Young Man Movement in detail. 1.1 Introduction: Sir Kingsley William Amis , (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) is an eminent English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, scripts for radio and television, along with works of social and literary criticism. Kingsley Amis was best known as a prolific novelist who, as described in the words of Blake Morrison in the Times Literary Supplement, had the “ability to go on 1 surprising us.” He won critical praise in 1954 with his first novel, Lucky Jim. He wrote three other humorous works, and was characterized as a comic novelist writing in the tradition of P. G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. Critics established him among the foremost of the “Angry Young Men School” in which British writers who disdained post-World War II British society throughout the 1950s. Following his early works, however, Amis produced a series of novels that differed in genre and seriousness of theme. His place in British literature was acknowledged in 1986, as his seventeenth novel, The Old Devils, won the Booker Prize which is known as Britain's highest literary award. In 1990, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Poetry • 1947 Bright November • 1953 A Frame of Mind • 1954 Poems: Fantasy Portraits • 1956 A Case of Samples: Poems 1946–1956 • 1962 The Evans County • 1968 A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957–1967 • 1979 Collected Poems 1944–78 Fiction Novels • c. 1948 The Legacy (unpublished) • 1954 Lucky Jim • 1955 That Uncertain Feeling • 1958 I Like It Here • 1960 Take a Girl Like You • 1963 One Fat Englishman • 1965 The Egyptologists (with Robert Conquest) • 1966 The Anti-Death League 2 • 1968 Colonel Sun: a James Bond Adventure (pseud. Robert Markham) • 1968 I Want It Now • 1969 The Green Man • 1971 Girl, 20 • 1973 The Riverside Villas Murder • 1974 Ending Up • 1975 The Crime of the Century • 1976 The Alteration • 1978 Jake's Thing • 1980 Russian Hide-and-Seek • 1984 Stanley and the Women • 1986 The Old Devils • 1988 Difficulties with Girls • 1990 The Folks That Live on the Hill • 1991 We Are All Guilty • 1992 The Russian Girl • 1994 You Can't Do Both • 1995 The Biographer's Moustache [37] • c. 1995 Black and White (unfinished) Short fiction collections • 1962 My Enemy's Enemy • 1980 Collected Short Stories • 1991 Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories Other short fiction • 1960 "Hemingway in Space" (short story), Punch December 1960 Non-fiction 3 • 1957 Socialism and the Intellectuals , a Fabian Society pamphlet • 1960 New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction • 1965 The James Bond Dossier • 1965 The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 (pseud. Lt.-Col William ('Bill') Tanner) • 1970 What Became of Jane Austen?, and Other Questions • 1972 On Drink • 1974 Rudyard Kipling and His World • 1983 Everyday Drinking • 1984 How's Your Glass? • 1990 The Amis Collection • 1991 Memoirs • 1997 The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage (name in part a pun as he was sometimes called "Kingers" or "The King" by friends and family, as told by his son Martin in his memoir Experience ) • 2001 The Letters of Kingsley Amis , Edited by Zachary Leader • 2008 Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis , Introduction by Christopher Hitchens (an omnibus edition of On Drink , Everyday Drinking and How's Your Glass? ) Editor • 1967 Spectrum V : a fifth science fiction anthology (ed. with Robert Conquest) • 1978 The New Oxford Book of Light Verse (ed.) Angry Young Man Movement: The literature in 20th century is dominated by war with common themes of alienation, isolation and fragmentation. Many wars such as the Boer War and continued through World War I, World War II, The Balkans, Korea, and Vietnam, The First Gulf, Granada, etc were faced by this century. The World War I was fought as, "The war to end all wars" until the World War II. The destruction, in the 4 cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan and towns without ever facing the foe, threatened the world. The destruction and uprooted families alarmed the upcoming menace. As a result, most of the 20th century fiction, poetry and short stories have the common theme of loneliness. The writing is distinct with the theme of deep psychological trauma. Another influence which had social and historical importance on the themes in English literature is the change in England's role in the world. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, England was the dominating world power with its imperialism and establishment of colonies and political influence across the world. After the First and the Second World War, England's global reach was weakened. There were labour organizations rising in power. Women were asserting their equal rights. There was much more attention to social legislation and welfare concerns. The country moved towards its more modern socialist state. These concerns become the themes of the literature. The literature presented the changed contexts of social classes, more democratic society, emergence of new members of society such as women, migrants and immigrants and mass- consumerist economic shift. Many writers started writing about material aspects of life to work, to the expectations brought about by social reformism and political change, and to the shift in relationships, class and gender conditioned terms. After the bereavement of World War II, the public did not look for new ideas and styles, but for comfort and reassurance in literature. However, by 1955, they questioned the old values and certainties which religion and nation had traditionally provided, and a new generation of critical young novelists, playwrights and artists emerged. By the appearance of Neo-realism, a trend was observed which worked against Modernism. The Second World War left a disastrous impact on the civilization. The post-World War II era was remarkably characterized by depression and anxiety as the postwar reforms failed to meet high expectations for genuine change. This very desolate picture is also evident in the literature of the 20th century. These unfavourable impacts of World War II helped to create several new traditions in literature. One such movement made its way in the early 1950s which was labeled as the Angry Young Men Movement. The literature of this age chiefly represented a rebellious and critical attitude towards the postwar British society. The group of 5 “angry young men” comprised of English novelists and playwrights, mostly having lower middle or working-class, and with university education. No considerable trends have been observed in English fiction since the time of the angry young men of the 1950s and 1960s. This group, which included the novelists Kingsley Amis, John Wain, and John Braine, attacked outmoded social values left over from the pre-war world. Novelists such as Alan Sillitoe, Kingsley Amis and John Braine were mostly young, and like many of the British readers at the time, they expressed impatience with tradition, authority and the ruling class. Their works reflect their anger and frustrations with the established systems. Many novels are set in working-class areas of depressed cities in the industrial north, and have sexually explicit scenes. Dialogues are carried out in regional dialects which give a strong sense of the characters’ identity and social lower background. The protagonists of these novels are 'outsiders'. They do not identify with modern society. Like the authors themselves they are impatient, dissatisfied and critical of traditional morality and behaviour. They feel resentful and powerless but are violent sometimes. These uneducated, undisciplined heroes are different from literary conventions, but it meant that disagreement, honesty and openness were introduced into literature not only in novel and drama, but also television and film by the writers known as the “angry young men”. Alan Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959) is a story of an impoverished Nottingham teenager who has less prospects in life and enjoys few trackings beyond committing petty crimes. His home life is unhappy. Caught for robbing a bakery, Colin is confined to a borstal (Youth Detention Centre), or prison for delinquent (involved in minor crimes) youth. He finds solace in long distance running, attracting the attention of the school's authorities, but, during an important cross-country race which he is about to win, he stops just short of the finish line to rebel his captors. The heroes of the “angry young men’ novels are hesitant, timid men. They are not brave enough to fight against directly. They express their anger elsewhere. Their ‘manly’ presentation is not found in literature. The novels of Kingsley Amis also represent these Young Heroes who express their anger against the prevailing systems in a very timid manner. 6 1.3 Chapter-wise Summary of Lucky Jim: Chapter 1 The novel opens with Professor Ned Welch and Jim Dixon walking together across the campus of a small English college.