James T. Bowen

James’ doctoral thesis considers the processes and criteria by which mid-century authors fall in and out of critical and/or popular favour. Examining the reception histories of a range of authors, focusing primarily on C.P. Snow, Iris Murdoch, John Fowles and William Golding, he advances the contention that central to their rising and falling cultural prominence is their relationship to a conception of the ethical role of fiction. Each chapter offers a reading of the author as a case study of the possible roles that ethics might play in authorial reputation, acting variously as an imperative for literary production that might in some sense redeem seemingly lacking aesthetic merit, or might conversely be read as a naivete that might be more appropriately neglected in favour of formal or theoretical concerns. Ultimately, he argues that a closer and renewed attention to each author’s conception of fictional ethics and its critical handling offers renewed insight into both the post-war literary marketplace and mid-century public culture more generally.