Foreign Affairs
by Alison Lurie
- 6 Members Following
Follow a topic to see new activity, such as homework help questions and answers, in your personal feed on the homepage.
At a glance:
- Author: Alison Lurie
- First Published: 1984
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Comedy of manners
- Setting: London
- Characters: Virginia “Vinnie” Miner, Charles “Chuck” Mumpson, Fred Turner, Lady Rosemary Radley
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire, Comedy of manners, Novel
- Subjects: Teaching or teachers, Intellectuals, Class conflict, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Marriage, Prejudices or antipathies, Social life, 1980's, College life, England or English people, Adultery, Wit or humor, London, Colleges or universities, Learning or scholarship, Parties
- Locales: Europe, London, England, United Kingdom
The Story:
Virginia Miner is an unmarried fifty-four-year-old professor of children’s literature at Corinth University, a major Ivy League college. She is flying to London for a six-month stay on a grant to study British schoolyard rhymes, her field of expertise. Her work has been criticized, most notably by fellow academic L. D. Zimmern, for being slight and inconsequential.
Miner is, by her own admission, unattractive (she is prone to self-pity and has an imaginary dog named Fido who appears whenever she feels sorry for herself). Although married briefly, she has...
(The entire page is 2071 words.)
Want to read the whole thing?
Subscribe now to read the rest of this article. Plus, get access to:
- 30,000+ literature study guides
- Critical essays on more than 30,000 works of literature from Salem on Literature (exclusive to eNotes)
- An unparalleled literary criticism section. 40,000 full-length or excerpted essays.
- Content from leading academic publishers, all easily citable with our "Cite this page" button.
- 100% satisfaction guarantee READ MORE
