The Intersection of Class and Space in British Postwar Writing

Kitchen Sink Aesthetics

Simon Lee

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350193154
• eBook ISBN: 9781350193116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Centering on the British kitchen sink realism movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, specifically its documentation of the built environment's influence on class consciousness, this book highlights the settings of a variety of novels, plays, and films, turning to archival research to offer new ways of thinking about how spatial representation in cultural production sustains or intervenes in the process of social stratification. As a movement that used gritty, documentary-style depictions of space to highlight the complexities of working-class life, the period's texts chronicled shifts in the social and topographic landscape while advancing new articulations of citizenship in response to the failures of post-war reconstruction. By exploring the impact of space on class, this book addresses the contention that critical discourse has overlooked the way the built environment informs class identity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1 “Look at the State of This Place!”—The Impact of Domestic Space on Postwar Class Consciousness
• 2 “Off Down the Local”—Institutional Borders in Working-Class Communities
• 3 Spatial Transgression and the Working-Class Imaginary
• 4 Against Class Fetishism: The Legacy of Kitchen Sink Realism
• References
• Index
• Imprint