DOCSLIB.ORG

“Neither Mickling Nor Muckling" Northern Reflexivity in the Novels of the British “New Wave”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
“Neither Mickling Nor Muckling “Neither mickling nor muckling" Northern Reflexivity in the Novels of the British “New Wave” The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Stephenson, John A. 2013. “Neither mickling nor muckling" Northern Reflexivity in the Novels of the British “New Wave”. Master's thesis, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:28700329 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA “Neither mickling nor muckling” Northern Reflexivity in the Novels of the British “New Wave” John A. Stephenson A Thesis in the Field of English for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University November 2012 © 2012 John Ashley Stephenson Abstract This study proposes that the novels associated with the early 1960s cinematic “British New Wave,” though popularly representative of Northern England, have suffered from under-reading with respect to place-specific identity. Contemporary journalistic construction of the “angry young man,” and subsequent working class- focused analyses obscured textual expressions of northernness available to readers for whom northern place provides “belonging.” Partly as a result of the social change upon which commentators fixated, northern identity was extremely visible in its articulation in the post-war years, and the “New Wave” corpus provides a rich resource for its continuing analysis. Would a specifically “northern” re-examination of the texts by an “insider” reader provide a novel interpretation of the works and their authors, as well as revealing the ways in which this identity is assumed and communicated? Through close reading of texts “of the north,” supported by reference to analyses of place and critical approaches to the novels, the study demonstrates the progressive rarefication of a self- conscious, “performed” identity that nevertheless constitutes a genuine expression of attachment to place. Furthermore, the works of the “New Wave” authors Braine, Sillitoe, Waterhouse, Storey, and Barstow negotiate changes in northern landscape and community, their fully “reflexive northernness” interrogating both itself and more “settled” modes of belonging. The “loud” northern voice characterising this literature of the 1950s and 60s resolved the incongruities of post-industrial regional identity to some extent, enabling a partial return to a still conscious, but quieter “just is” northernness. Dedication For my grandmother, May Mitchinson, 1917–2009. Back home in Sunderland. To my parents, Ken and Stella, who were there. And to the memory of Alan Sillitoe, Keith Waterhouse, and Stan Barstow, all sadly lost whilst this study was in preparation. ! "#! Acknowledgements My grateful thanks to Bob and Sarah Stephenson for the tour of Sillitoe’s Nottingham in April 2011, and to the faculty and staff of the Harvard Extension School for their generosity and wisdom. ! #! Table of Contents Dedication……………………………………………………………………….……….iv Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………….………….v I. Introduction………………………………………….……………………...............2 II. “Eh, you’re mucky but I love you”: Northernness and the North……..…….…….12 III. “Willful black dreariness”: Texts “of the North” preceding the “New Wave”.........30 IV. “Queer-fish-from-the-backwoods stuff”: Northernness in the texts of the “Movement”…………………………………………………………………….….59 V. “Just about thraiped wi’ Stradhoughton”: Reflexive northernness and the “New Wave”………………………………………………………………….…….78 VI. “You can’t have your independence … and your mother’s pies as well”: After the Wave, after the North?............................................................................................112 VII. Conclusion: “I don’t know right. It just is that’s all”……………………………...151 Bibliography.........……………….………...……..……………………………………..161 Works Cited ..………………………………………...…………………..……….161 Works Consulted…...………………………………………………….……...…...167 ! #"! In Lancashire and Yorkshire ever since the world began, This is the expression of the strong and silent man: “Ee by gum!” “Ee by gum!” The only thing he ever says is “Ee by gum!” He says it when he’s happy, and he says it when he’s glum He means an awful lot when he says “Ee by gum!” —As performed by Gracie Fields Chapter I Introduction Writers associated with the “cultural event” of late 1950s and early 1960s Britain (Hitchcock 21) represented variously in the literary and news media as a “New Wave,” “Angry Young Man,” “northern realist,” or “kitchen sink” movement suffered a double problem of interpretation. The bracketing together of novels featuring young, lower class, provincial, disaffected protagonists written by authors categorised similarly, engendered an overhyped and relatively short-lived literary phenomenon too closely identified with contemporary social changes and concerns. An overly sociological emphasis has tended to distort critical analysis of these novels, and as the “New Wave” receded, its representative texts were “relegated to the margins of the literary canon” (Russell 82). Subsequent works by authors brought to prominence by this cultural moment, particularly those maintaining a realist, provincial focus, have received surprisingly little critical attention (Laing 81). Existing scholarship has adequately explored the genesis and eventual waning of the “New Wave” (e.g., Laing; Hitchcock; Ritchie), but reanalysis of the texts themselves has been minimal. The 1980s produced a number of class-focused readings more sophisticated in their approach than contemporary analyses anchored in the “aspirant working-class” paradigm, but it was not until the following decade that academic interest in “place” provided a framework for more innovative and fruitful interpretation. Geographers, sociologists, and practitioners of cultural studies have in recent years ! $! investigated concepts of region, belonging, and identity—with such studies in Britain often concentrating on the enduring socio-cultural “North-South divide.” Despite the situating of “New Wave” narratives in the North, their effective use of dialect, and the contribution to northern iconography by film versions of the novels, northern identity articulated within the texts initially received little attention. Contemporary critics, journalists, and publishers presented the northernness of both the texts and their authors as a genre-defining element or marketing strategy. Northern towns, defined as “other” in relation to London, constituted exotically bleak, deprived landscapes within which characters played out narratives of despair, defiance, and escape. Why, then, would a northern-focused reanalysis of the “New Wave” authors’ texts be a productive undertaking? Such a close reading of these novels could conceivably contribute to recent explorations of northernness in addition to further illuminating the texts themselves. If the socio-cultural moment of change in the late 1950s is posited as a vital point at which—partly as a result of the sociological currents identified at the time— northernness was extremely visible in its articulation, the “New Wave” corpus may provide an extremely rich resource for its continuing analysis. Can its texts be considered “icons of northern identity” in spite of the distortions of their “external” reception? Place studies have heightened interest in regional identity, and those discussing the North never fail to mention the 1950s “New Wave” as its modern literary and cinematic apogee. For the most part they have not, however, interrogated the texts to examine their essential northernness, distinct from their northern setting and authorship. Through such a reading of the key “New Wave” novels—Room at the Top (John Braine), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Alan Sillitoe), A Kind of Loving, (Stan Barstow), Billy Liar (Keith Waterhouse), and This Sporting Life (David Storey) I hope to reveal the highly complex, ! %! actively articulated northern identity that characterises these works. Braine eloquently describes a manifestation of what I want to call “northern reflexivity” in his later novel The Jealous God as “half-unconscious, half in jest” aptly summing up the genuine, yet self- aware and humorous expression of place-specific identity (48). The conscious use of dialect words, expressions (especially “stock phrases”) and structures, and a semi- humorous identification with the “grim” and the “ordinary” contribute to this projection of northernness. The thesis will investigate whether an “under-reading” of these novels coloured their initial reception, and if their current exclusion from wider literary history results at least in part from the omission of “place-based” interpretations of the texts. Such analysis, I shall argue, is available in its fullest extent to individuals within the community of northern author, characters, and reader. In addition, I will question whether such a subjective reading strategy can successfully negotiate the pitfalls of regional stereotype and cliché, both externally imposed and internalised by “insiders,” possibly via the very cultural products under examination. In addition to studies of the “New Wave” cultural event mentioned above, contemporary critical reviews, writers’ autobiographies, and publishing materials including descriptive copy, jacket designs, and author
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty (Eds.), Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles
    408 ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS further explanations for their contemporary distribution. Now, with Krug's results at one's ®nger tips, further research can be spear-headed grounded in his rich ®ndings. Reviewer's address: Department of Linguistics University of Toronto 130 St George Street, Room 6076 Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H1 Canada [email protected] References Facchinetti, R., M. Krug, & F. Palmer (eds.) (to appear). Modality in contemporary English. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ho¯and, K., A. Lindebjerg, & J. Thunestvedt (1999). ICAME collection of English language corpora. CD. 2nd edition. The HIT Centre. University of Bergen. Bergen, Norway. Kroch, A. S. (1989). Re¯exes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1: 199±244. Kroch, A. S. (2001). Syntactic change. In Baltin, M. & C. Collins (eds.), The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. 699±729. Mair, C. & M. Hundt (1997). `Agile' and `uptight' genres: the corpus-based approach to language change in progress. Paper presented at International Conference on Historical Linguistics. DuÈsseldorf, Germany. Tagliamonte, S. A. (2001). Have to, gotta, must: grammaticalization, variation and specialization in English deontic modality. Paper presented at the Symposium on Corpus Research on Grammaticalization in English (CORGIE). Vaxjo, Sweden. 20±22 April 2001. Tagliamonte, S. A. (to appear). `Every place has a different toll': determinants of grammatical variation cross-variety perspective. In Rhodenberg G. & B. Mondorf (eds.), Determinants of grammatical variation in English. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (Received 3 May 2002) DOI: 10.1017/S1360674302270288 Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty (eds.), Urban voices: accent studies in the British Isles.
    [Show full text]
  • Recommended Reading for Students of English And
    Recommended Reading for Students of English Literature (Version: January 1, 2018) British and Postcolonial Literature ................................................................................... 1 1. Old and Middle English Literature ....................................................................... 1 2. Novels and Short Stories ........................................................................................ 1 3. Plays ......................................................................................................................... 4 4. Poetry ....................................................................................................................... 6 5. Other Works............................................................................................................. 9 North American Literature ............................................................................................. 10 1. Novels and Short Stories ...................................................................................... 10 2. Plays ....................................................................................................................... 12 3. Poetry ..................................................................................................................... 13 4. Other Works........................................................................................................... 15 Anthologies .....................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Leeds Civic Trust Newsletter April 2020 Message From
    OUTLOOK LEEDS CIVIC TRUST NEWSLETTER APRIL 2020 MESSAGE FROM MARTIN The Trust Director writes a special piece about our response to the current Covid-19 pandemic. SEE PAGE 2 PLANNING NEWS Technology allows our Planning Committee to keep ‘meeting’ with Mike Piet on the line to report. SEE PAGE 4 WASTE NOT Claude Saint Arroman considers what we throw away after a visit to Martin HW Waste facility. SEE PAGE 6 MERCURY RETROGRADE Roderic Parker reports on a Trust visit to a printers with a collection of very special vintage postcards. SEE PAGE 8 KEITH WATERHOUSE HONOURED The Hunslet born author and journalist now has his own blue plaque. SEE PAGE 10 ALTHOUGHWHERE WAS THE THIS OFFICE PHOTO IS TAKENCURRENTLY FROM? CLOSED, FIND OUT A RAINBOW IN NEXT MONTH’S HAS APPEARED OUTLOOK... IN ITS WINDOW. ENCOURAGING DEVELOPMENT CONSERVING AND ENHANCING PROMOTING THE IMPROVEMENT THAT IS A SOURCE OF PRIDE THE HERITAGE OF LEEDS OF PUBLIC AMENITIES 2 APRIL 2020 A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR A message from Trust Director, Martin, regarding the Trust’s response to Covid-19. It doesn’t need me to tell you that these are extraordinary times. Back in January we were looking forward to a full year here at the Trust. Events were being finalised, a full schedule of blue plaque unveilings scheduled, our spring season of corporate lunches with a new caterer booked and plans to implement our five year Vision were progressing. We now have the proofs for the much- anticipated second Blue Plaques book, and we were looking forward to launch this in late Spring.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 36 Harold Pinter: the Dramatist and His World
    Chapter 36 Harold Pinter: The Dramatist and His World Background Nobel winner, Harold Pinter (1930- 2008) was born in London, England in a Jewish family. Some of the most recognizable features in his plays are the use of understatement, small talk, reticence , and silence. These devices are employed to convey the substance of a character’s thoughts. At the outbreak of World War II, Pinter was evacuated from the city to Cornwall; to be wrenched from his parents was a traumatic event for Pinter. He lived with 26 other boys in a castle on the coast. At the age of 14, he returned to London. "The condition of being bombed has never left me," Pinter later said. At school one of Pinter's main intellectual interests was English literature, particularly poetry. He also read works of Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway, and started writing poetry for little magazines in his teens. The seeds of rebellion in Pinter could be spotted early on when he refused to do the National Service. As a young man, he studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, but soon left to undertake an acting career under the stage name David Baron. He travelled around Ireland in a Shakespearean company and spent years working in provincial repertory before deciding to turn his attention to playwriting. Pinter was married from 1956 to the actress Vivien Merchant. For a time, they lived in Notting Hill Gate in a slum. Eventually Pinter managed to borrow some money and move away.
    [Show full text]
  • Stanley S. Atherton ALAN SILLITOE's BATTLEGROUND
    Stanley S. Atherton ALAN SILLITOE'S BATTLEGROUND I FoR ALAN S1LLIT0E's HEROES, to live at all is to fight, and this belligerence de- fines their existence in the English working-class world that they inhabit. Their struggles, while reflecting the difficulties of individual protagonists, are primarily class confliots echoing the author's disillusion with contemporary English society. The early Seaton-family novels, Saturday Niglit and Sunday Morning and Key to the Door, along with the shorter works The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller, offer a series of loud and angry protests which define Sillitoe's working-class perspective, while the later novels, The Death of William Posters and A Tree on Fire, move beyond this co a more positive approach to the problems of existence raised in the earlier work. The battles of his heroes, whether they are visceral or cerebral, internal or external, idealistic or pragmatic, are all fought to achieve Sillitoe's utopian dream of a better world. The central campaigns in Sillitoe's war are aimed at toppling a social structure built on inequality and characterized by haves and have-nots. The early fiction makes it clear: the two groups are enemies. Smith, the Borstal boy in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, talks of "them" and "us" and reveals tha:t "they don't see eye to eye with us and we don't see eye to eye with them."1 His thoughts on the lonely practice-runs over the early-morning countryside lead him to conclude that "by sending me to Borstal they've shown me the knife, and from now on I know something I didn't know before: that it's war between me and them.
    [Show full text]
  • The Concept of Identity in the East Midlands of England NATALIE
    The Concept of Identity in the East Midlands of England NATALIE BRABER Investigating feelings of identity in East Midlands adolescents Introduction When considering dialectal variation in the UK, linguists have frequently considered the North/South divide and the linguistic markers separating the two regions (see for example Trudgill, 1999; Wells, 1986). But it has been noted that this is not a straightforward division (e.g. Beal, 2008; Goodey, Gold, Duffett & Spencer, 1971; Montgomery, 2007; Wales, 2002). There are clear stereotypes for the North and South – but how do areas like the East Midlands fit into the picture? The boundaries between North and South are defined in different ways. Beal’s linguistic North does not include the East Midlands (Beal, 2008: 124- 5), neither does Wales’ (2002: 48). Trudgill states that in traditional dialectology the East Midlands area falls under ‘Central’ dialects, which come under the ‘Southern’ branch, but in modern dialectology it falls in the ‘North’. Hughes, Trudgill and Watt (2005: 70) contains a map which has the East Midlands in the North. Linguistically, the question has been raised whether there is a clear North/South boundary (see for example Upton (2012) where it is proposed that it is a transition zone). This paper revisits this question from the point of view of young people living in the East Midlands, to examine their sense of identity and whether this cultural divide is salient to them. The East Midlands is a problematic area in its definition geographically, and people may have difficulty in relating this to their own sense of identity.
    [Show full text]
  • From Free Cinema to British New Wave: a Story of Angry Young Men
    SUPLEMENTO Ideas, I, 1 (2020) 51 From Free Cinema to British New Wave: A Story of Angry Young Men Diego Brodersen* Introduction In February 1956, a group of young film-makers premiered a programme of three documentary films at the National Film Theatre (now the BFI Southbank). Lorenza Mazzetti, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson thought at the time that “no film can be too personal”, and vehemently said so in their brief but potent manifesto about Free Cinema. Their documentaries were not only personal, but aimed to show the real working class people in Britain, blending the realistic with the poetic. Three of them would establish themselves as some of the most inventive and irreverent British filmmakers of the 60s, creating iconoclastic works –both in subject matter and in form– such as Saturday Day and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and If… Those were the first significant steps of a New British Cinema. They were the Big Screen’s angry young men. What is British cinema? In my opinion, it means many different things. National cinemas are much more than only one idea. I would like to begin this presentation with this question because there have been different genres and types of films in British cinema since the beginning. So, for example, there was a kind of cinema that was very successful, not only in Britain but also in America: the films of the British Empire, the films about the Empire abroad, set in faraway places like India or Egypt. Such films celebrated the glory of the British Empire when the British Empire was almost ending.
    [Show full text]
  • Salient Features of the Welsh Accent That Are Chosen to Be Portrayed in Film
    MA Language and Communication Research Cardiff University Salient Features of the Welsh Accent that are Chosen to be Portrayed in Film Andrew Booth C1456511 Supervisor: Dr Mercedes Durham Word Count: 16,448 September 2015 Abstract The accent portrayed by an actor in films has many different implications to the audience. For authenticity, the filmmakers need their accent to be as close to genuine speech as possible. The Welsh-English accent in film is portrayed in many different ways; the aim of this study is to investigate which features are viewed as salient to filmmakers when portraying a Welsh accent. This dissertation focuses the portrayal of salient features of the Welsh-English accent in the film Pride (2014). Pride was chosen because it can compare Welsh to non-Welsh actors who portray a Welsh-English accent. The research is carried out on the film using both auditory and acoustic analysis. Tokens from the film were coded in terms of their realisations for analysis and comparison to previous literature. This research produced a number of key findings: first, the Welsh actors supported previous research on patterns of realisation for Welsh-English. Second, the non-Welsh actors recognised and produced the key features of a Welsh-English accent. Finally, the features presented are salient when representing a Welsh accent in film. In summary, theories such as accommodation, language transference, hypercorrection, fudging and transition were used to explain variation of accents. This research argues for a multi- methodological approach to analysing different features of a Welsh-English accent in film. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Mercedes Durham for her instrumental advice and insight over the past few months.
    [Show full text]
  • LINGUISTIC CONTEXT of H-DROPPING Heinrich RAMISCH University of Bamberg Heinrich
    Dialectologia. Special issue, I (2010), 175-184. ISSN: 2013-22477 ANALYSING LINGUISTIC ATLAS DATA: THE (SOCIO-) LINGUISTIC CONTEXT OF H-DROPPING Heinrich R AMISCH University of Bamberg [email protected] Abstract This presentation will seek to illustrate how linguistic atlas data can be employed to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms of linguistic variation and change. For this purpose, I will take a closer look at ‘H-dropping’ – a feature commonly found in various European languages and also widely used in varieties of British English. H-dropping refers to the non-realization of /h/ in initial position in stressed syllables before vowels, as for example, in hand on heart [ 'ænd ɒn 'ɑː t] or my head [m ɪ 'ɛd]. It is one of the best-known nonstandard features in British English, extremely widespread, but also heavily stigmatised and commonly regarded as ‘uneducated’, ‘sloppy’, ‘lazy’, etc. It prominently appears in descriptions of urban accents in Britain (cf. Foulkes/Docherty 1999) and according to Wells (1982: 254), it is “the single most powerful pronunciation shibboleth in England”. H-dropping has frequently been analysed in sociolinguistic studies of British English and it can indeed be regarded as a typical feature of working-class speech. Moreover, H-dropping is often cited as one of the features that differentiate ‘Estuary English’ from Cockney, with speakers of the former variety avoiding ‘to drop their aitches’. The term ‘Estuary English’ is used as a label for an intermediate variety between the most localised form of London speech (Cockney) and a standard form of pronunciation in the Greater London area.
    [Show full text]
  • Enregisterment in Historical Contexts
    0 Enregisterment in Historical Contexts: A Framework Paul Stephen Cooper A thesis submitted to the University of Sheffield for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics February 2013 1 ABSTRACT In this thesis I discuss how the phenomena of indexicality and enregisterment (Silverstein 2003; Agha 2003) can be observed and studied in historical contexts via the use of historical textual data. I present a framework for the study of historical enregisterment which compares data from corpora of both nineteenth-century and modern Yorkshire dialect material, and the results of an online survey of current speakers so as to ascertain the validity of the corpus data and to use ‘the present to explain the past’ (Labov 1977:226). This framework allows for the identification of enregistered repertoires of Yorkshire dialect in both the twenty-first and nineteenth centuries. This is achieved by combining elicited metapragmatic judgements and examples of dialect features from the online survey with quantitative frequency analysis of linguistic features from Yorkshire dialect literature and literary dialect (Shorrocks 1996) and qualitative metapragmatic discourse (Johnstone et al 2006) from sources such as dialect dictionaries, dialect grammars, travel writing, and glossaries. I suggest that processes of enregisterment may operate along a continuum and that linguistic features may become ‘deregistered’ as representative of a particular variety; I also suggest that features may become ‘deregistered’ to the point of becoming ‘fossil forms’, which is more closely related to Labov’s (1972) definition of the ultimate fate of a linguistic stereotype. I address the following research questions: 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Course Proposals 97-8
    אוניברסיטת בן-גוריון בנגב BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ABRAHAMS-CURIEL DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LITERATURES AND LINGUISTICS Professor Efraim Sicher THE POSTWAR BRITISH NOVEL THIRD YEAR SEMINAR 4 PTS MONDAYS AND THURSDAYS 14-16 FIRST SEMESTER Course Description Postwar British prose fiction reflects the changes in society, politics and literature since 1945. From the postwar new wave to post-colonialism, from the Angry Young Man to postmodernism, we look at the best writers of the last 70 years. Course objectives This course gives students knowledge of basic concepts in postwar British fiction in the context of postmodernism. It provokes basic questions about the relation of fiction and truth, history and literature. Keywords: Britain 1945-2020; postmodernism; history; fiction. Course requirements Active participation required 4 Preparatory questions 20% 1 Seminar Paper 15-18 pages 40% (due March 10). 1 Presentation (to be handed in as a 5-6 page written paper by March 10) 40% Required Reading George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four William Golding, Lord of the Flies Ian McEwan, Atonement Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume 2 Additional texts (choose one for presentation) The campus novel (Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim) Dystopia now (Anthony Burgess, Clockwork Orange) Anger and after (Keith Waterhouse, Billy Liar; Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner) Women Writers (Angela Carter, Fay Wheldon, Emma Tennant, Penelope Lively) Other voices: Salman Rushdie (The Moor’s Last Sigh); Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day); Ben Okri; Clive Sinclair (Blood Libels). Postmodernism: Julian Barnes; Martin Amis; Ian McEwan; Graham Swift.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural Representations of the Moors Murderers and Yorkshire Ripper Cases
    CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MOORS MURDERERS AND YORKSHIRE RIPPER CASES by HENRIETTA PHILLIPA ANNE MALION PHILLIPS A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Modern Languages School of Languages, Cultures, Art History, and Music College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham October 2016 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis examines written, audio-visual and musical representations of real-life British serial killers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady (the ‘Moors Murderers’) and Peter Sutcliffe (the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’), from the time of their crimes to the present day, and their proliferation beyond the cases’ immediate historical-legal context. Through the theoretical construct ‘Northientalism’ I interrogate such representations’ replication and engagement of stereotypes and anxieties accruing to the figure of the white working- class ‘Northern’ subject in these cases, within a broader context of pre-existing historical trajectories and generic conventions of Northern and true crime representation. Interrogating changing perceptions of the cultural functions and meanings of murderers in late-capitalist socio-cultural history, I argue that the underlying structure of true crime is the counterbalance between the exceptional and the everyday, in service of which its second crucial structuring technique – the depiction of physical detail – operates.
    [Show full text]