Journal article
Anti-state fantasy and the fiction of the 1940s
- Abstract:
- This essay argues that the wartime institutionalisation of emergency governmental powers and the expectation of their continuance under a post-war socialist administration led to a pervasive anti-statism indistinguishable from anti-Communism in the mid-century British novel. Focusing on less-read dystopias of the period, Rex Warner's The Aerodrome (1941) and C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (1945), I argue that these conservative novels are best understood as extreme iterations of a more widespread anxiety about the potentially totalitarian elements of a centralising and technocratic democracy at war.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 115.6KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.7227/lh.24.1.5
Authors
- Publisher:
- SAGE Publications
- Journal:
- Literature and History More from this journal
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 27-40
- Publication date:
- 2015-05-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2050-4594
- ISSN:
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0306-1973
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:642622
- UUID:
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uuid:a8c976c7-a6e1-4068-8f6e-756f4bcc2f6f
- Local pid:
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pubs:642622
- Source identifiers:
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642622
- Deposit date:
-
2019-04-01
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Manchester University Press
- Copyright date:
- 2015
- Notes:
- Copyright © Manchester University Press. This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from SAGE Publications at: https://doi.org/10.7227/lh.24.1.5
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