عنوان

Militancy, commitment and Marxist ideology in the fiction of Dan Billany

Number

TLets576575

Title Proper

Militancy, commitment and Marxist ideology in the fiction of Dan Billany

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Cloutier, Stephen

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Quinn, Patrick

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Leicester

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

1999

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Leicester

Text preceding or following the note

1999

Text of Note

Dan Billany (1913-1943?) published only four novels, yet in those novels he engages in the debates that preoccupy Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. Billany's view of the period, however, differs from that of his more famous contemporaries. As a young working class man, he challenges contemporary assumptions about this literary period, arguing that the more bourgeois writers have a false view of the working class. This study aims to recast the political and literary memory of the 1930s and 1940s in order to show how a young working class writer from the North of England defines and shapes Marxist and literary tradition to further his revolutionary ideals. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to provoke the debate that will give Billany, badly underrated, the attention he deserves.;Due recognition of his fiction will help to expand the critical view of the 1930s and 1940s. Billany actively engages not only with the period but with those writers who have traditionally been seen as defining that literary period. His attacks on writers such as John Galsworthy and W.H. Auden show that Billany is trying to develop a truly radical Communist working class literary tradition. As an educated working class man and a committed Communist, Billany offers an alternative view to the traditional and conservative attitudes associated with pre-war and wartime writing.

PR6000 1900-1960

Cloutier, Stephen

Quinn, Patrick

University of Leicester

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y