Chorus and Agon in the political novel: Staging left-wing arguments in H.G. Wells, Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing

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Taunton, Matthew (2021) Chorus and Agon in the political novel: Staging left-wing arguments in H.G. Wells, Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 67 (2). pp. 247-271. ISSN 0026-7724

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Abstract

The novel of explicit political commitment is often seen as simplistic and formally naïve by left-leaning critics, who prefer the Jamesonian political unconscious. Yet political novels stage left-wing arguments in artful ways that not only situate arguments against counter arguments, but also test their efficacy in the embodied social lifeworld of the text. This essay uses Chantal Mouffe’s work on agonism to frame readings of H. G. Wells’s Kipps, Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net, and Doris Lessing’s A Proper Marriage. It shows how monological left-wing chorus characters bring counter-hegemonic ideas into the texts, testing the limits of liberal discussion novels.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Modern and Contemporary Writing Research Group
Related URLs:	https://muse.jhu.edu/article/795516
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	17 Dec 2020 00:53
Last Modified:	28 Jun 2025 00:44
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/77992
DOI:

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