Literary History Read Differently: Ina Schabert’s English Literary History of the Twentieth Century as a Cosmos of Male and Female Voices

Abstract

Ina Schabert’s book on British literature of the twentieth century is a literary history with a difference: the literary cosmos is seen as peopled by male and female authors who are engaged in a continuous conversation with each other—sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly. The book offers a detailed and fascinating account of these interactions from Early Modernism through the years of various political ‘realisms’ to the Postmodern world of ethnic and gender diversity.