With the proposition that we are now living in the Anthropocene – the geological epoch defined by human activities and their effects – the conditions of the pastoral are placed under unprecedented threat, and at the same time, they can be seen to be given new significance.
View More Human Nature: Pastoral in the Anthropocene
The term airport novel is something of a misnomer: while the spy novel must by definition involve spying and the historical novel takes readers back into history, airport novels aspire to remove us from the world of the airport. Designed to distract the reader from the boredom…
View More Departures: The Novel, the Non-Place and the Airport
One of the overt criticisms directed towards popular fiction is its requirement for a formulaic structure of characters, plot and narrative, which risks perpetuating the stereotype that all such fiction is repetitious, mass-produced and lacking in depth and originality.
View More Transgression and Contemporary Fiction
A project for poetry and text-based art has emerged over the past two years that tests the limits of what we broadly term as intermedia. The work is Caroline Bergvall’s combined ‘Middling English’, an exhibition at the John Hasard gallery in Southampton in 2010…
View More Intermediality: Middling and Meddle English