This book is a direct product of World War II, of the long years at sea that gave the author the feeling that the past was no more than an illusion. He compares past with present, one nation with another, to clarify the conviction that the nature of imaginative fiction had been altered by our wars.
1. Background to Catastrophe 2. An Experiment in Definition 3. Death, Manners, and Ideas 4. The two Naturalisms 5. Tradition and the Novel: England 6. Tradition and the Novel: America 7. War and Politics 8. The Novel As Obsession 9. Allegory and Satire 10. The Unwithered Branch
John McCormick, Rod Hague, Martin Harrop, USA) McCormick, John (Indiana University, UK) Hague, Rod (Wylam, UK) Harrop, Martin (Newcastle Upon Tyne, John Mccormick