ABSTRACT
This book is about what makes contemporary literature contemporary, and how to study such literature in a systematic and informed manner. A very large number of new literary works are made available to
readers every month, indeed every day. Consider what a variety of forms are broadly regarded as serious or popular literature now: various kinds of poetry, short and long fiction, theatre and screen plays, personal journals and blogs, biographies, e-fiction and fanfiction, essays, and so on. Moreover, contemplate the number of languages in which these literary works are produced, in the original or in translation. For a rough estimate, think of a wildly popular recent novel that has been translated for readers in most parts of the world. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels are a useful example of this sort: it is available in 64 living languages. These are languages in which literary works are published now and read more or less regularly; these languages sustain, so to speak, a contemporary literature market. True, the numbers of literary works published in these languages are very uneven. A great many more appear in English or Chinese, for instance, than in Irish or Faroese. But the point is that, if we think of the totality of the production and circulation of recently written literary works worldwide, we are faced with a very large
and unwieldy field. To begin with, let’s think of this almost unimaginably vast field as ‘contemporary literature’: the literature of our time, or of the present. We are rarely called upon to think of contemporary literature in
such broad terms. By ‘we’ I mean all readers of contemporary literature, in whatever language and wherever, however young or old, expert or inexpert – including me. This book is addressed to anyone who reads literary works that seem to be of our time. However, having said that, this book is obviously for readers who wish to do rather more than simply read such literature. I expect you are reading this because you wish to understand contemporary literature in a more systematic and informed fashion than usual. Possibly, that’s simply because you have an inquiring mind. Perhaps you are preparing for a school or university examination on, or are a teacher or researcher of, contemporary literature. This book will, I hope, prove useful for all of you – for us – in different ways. We rarely think of contemporary literature in the broad way
described above, for good reasons. Every one of us naturally reads such literary texts in an extremely selective manner. Our reading choices are limited significantly by factors such as where we live, what languages we are competent in, our education and upbringing, and the social circles we move in. That still leaves a much larger quantity of literature within reach than we can possibly read. We generally use various sorts of information to help us narrow down what we actually pick up. These may include advertisements, recommendations, reviews, the reputation of authors, displays in bookshops and libraries, film or television adaptations, literary prizes, packaging (what’s on the covers, for instance), issues of current interest, what’s trendy, etc. Then, of course, there are selections made for educational and academic purposes – I have much to say of this soon, so won’t pause on it here. At any rate, we read contemporary literature in manageable quantities, and our thoughts are unlikely to be burdened by the great weight of all contemporary literature at any given time. Further, we probably choose to read contemporary literature
because we expect it to be directly relevant to our lives and our world. We hope to find in it expressions and issues with which we are familiar. We anticipate resonances with our experiences, attitudes and concerns, as these have developed within our lifetimes and surface in our everyday lives. Of course, reading literary texts
from past periods (before our time, or the historically defined past) also necessarily call upon our present-day experiences and attitudes. We are, for instance, apt to make sense of Shakespearean sonnets in relation to our own memories and feelings. But contemporary literature is read with a sense of being closer to us than literature from the past. We feel that the literature that is written and appears in our time is more intimately connected with the complexity and messiness of our lives. It is in tune with how we speak and what we think about and observe. That means that we usually think of contemporary literature in the blurred way in which we think of our lives and times. We don’t often feel the need to stand back and think systematically about contemporary literature any more than we feel the need to stand back and ponder our lives – we are generally busy simply living our lives. We tend unquestioningly to accept that this sort of literature is woven with our lives. To move beyond simply reading thus and to begin thinking about
contemporary literature in a systematic manner puts us in danger of feeling intimidated. It means confronting contemporary literature in all its unwieldiness and breadth, much as described above. Understandably, the prospect could be discouraging. To persevere involves developing strategies for ordering and describing the field of contemporary literature so that its relevance to our lives/world, and its place in literature generally, would become clear. Fortunately, scholars and teachers have come up with such strategies already. These provide the foundation for studying contemporary literature in schools and universities – in brief, for academic study. To approach contemporary literature in an informed and systematic manner, it makes sense to take recourse to these existing academic strategies. As it happens, the existing strategies are functional but not
necessarily satisfactory for studying contemporary literature. Nor do they lead to a consistent way of approaching contemporary literature, but to various and often contradictory ways. To begin with then, it is worth enumerating what these strategies are, and deciding to what extent they are useful for our purposes. There are two levels of such academic strategies to take into account:
firstly, general strategies for the study of literature from different periods, which are therefore relevant to studying contemporary literature too; and
secondly, specific strategies for dealing with contemporary literature itself, which involve ways of defining what is specifically contemporary in literature.
