The History Man (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Malcolm Bradbury
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Work: Social satire
- Time of Work: The fall semester of 1972
- Setting: The fictional Watermouth University in Watermouth, England
- Principal Characters: Howard Kirk, Barbara Kirk, Henry Beamish, Myra Beamish, Flora Beniform, Moira Millikin, Miss Annie Callendar, Felicity Phee, George Carmody
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire
- Subjects: Teaching or teachers, 1970’s, Sex or sexuality, College life, England or English people, Ethics, Work or workers, Colleges or universities, Students or student life, Sociology
- Locales: England
The Novel
In mock-epic and mock-sociological style, The History Man satirically explores the rituals of a contemporary social phenomenon, at its height in the early 1970’s: the unstructured life, whose deliberate lack of form becomes the new structure of things. Defined by its Freudian-Marxist context, human nature is, in Malcolm Bradbury’s words, “a particular type of relationship to the temporal and historical process, culturally conditioned....” Howard Kirk, joined by his wife, Barbara, is the full embodiment of the postmodernist man, with his new...
[The entire page is 2283 words long]
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