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JOHN RODDEN and JOHN ROSSI, George Orwell.

2013; Oxford University Press; Volume: 60; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/notesj/gjt119

1471-6941

Michael G. Brennan,

Themes in Literature Analysis

WITH over seventy titles already in print, the Cambridge Introductions to Literature series provides a valuable service to its stated market—students, teachers, and lecturers—in offering concise and informative introductions to a wide range of authors and literary topics. This new addition to the series, collaboratively compiled by two noted Orwell experts, John Rodden and John Rossi, offers in its three sections a comprehensive reassessment of Orwell’s ‘Life and context’, ‘Works’ and ‘Critical reception’. Its range of accessibility is impressive in that it could be effectively utilized as a single volume by those students who simply wish to gain an overview of either one work by Orwell or his broader literary career, or it could be consulted in conjunction with John Rodden’s previously edited collection of sixteen informative essays by various authors in The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell (2007). Combining useful biographical perspectives with critical analyses of his major writings, this Cambridge Introduction examines both the main literary genres in which Orwell wrote and the distinct phases of his literary development. The literary status of the earliest period of his career, in which he endeavoured to write semi-realistic fictions in Burmese Days (1934), A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), is still very much under critical debate. Rodden handles these three works with a constructive sensitivity towards what Orwell was endeavouring to achieve in them rather than highlighting their sometimes obvious limitations in terms of structuring and characterization. One of the most obvious flaws in A Clergyman’s Daughter, apart from his unwise attempt to enter the mind of a solitary and sexually frustrated spinster (probably because of his own romantic interest at the time in Brenda Salkeld, a vicar’s daughter), was the fact that its five chapters lacked a productive connecting structure. Instead, they read more as a series of independent and only loosely drawn together sketches. Similarly, the genesis of Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)—begun in 1929 as ‘A Scullion’s Diary’, a short account (just over 30,000 words) of his Parisian experiences, which was too short for publication and so combined with his experiences of being a tramp in England and elements from his Adelphi journal narrative, ‘The Spike’, about an English doss-house—demonstrates his essential skill in producing short documentary analyses of social conditions and eccentric characters. At this period this facility was also being combined with some strident book reviewing for the Adelphi which confirmed an already highly developed ability to offer assured opinions and moral judgements. This Cambridge Introduction clearly demonstrates how such qualities became essential ingredients in his more mature works, especially The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and Homage to Catalonia (1938).