This chapter argues that the British experience of the Covid-19 pandemic shares a commonality of response with Brexit. Not only did the two things occur closely together in time but the ideological responses to each demonstrated a fundamental continuity in approach, an ideology that can be characterised as neoliberalism. Owing to this connection, and also as a result of their roles as committed social observers, many of the writers of Covid fiction had also been writers of Brexit novels shortly before the pandemic. The chapter shows that two different kinds of sequencing were often employed to make these connections: drawing on the example of Jonathan Coe’s Bourneville (2022) it argues that in some cases, writers reemployed characters, plots and settings for their Covid fiction that they had already created for their Brexit novels, thus giving rise to a formally conceived serial. Using the example of Sarah Moss’s Fell (2021) it shows that in other cases, writers used their Covid fiction to explore ideas that they had already developed in their earlier work without using the same characters or plots but demonstrating instead a measure of connection at the thematic level and thereby giving rise to a loosely connected series of works. These two forms of sequence are the primary means by which British writers of Covid fiction seek to critique the politics of the pandemic.

错误:搜索内容不能为空,请输入英文关键词
错误:关键词超出字数限制,请精简
高级检索

Reading the Dominant Ideology from Brexit to Covid

  • Hywel Dix

摘要

This chapter argues that the British experience of the Covid-19 pandemic shares a commonality of response with Brexit. Not only did the two things occur closely together in time but the ideological responses to each demonstrated a fundamental continuity in approach, an ideology that can be characterised as neoliberalism. Owing to this connection, and also as a result of their roles as committed social observers, many of the writers of Covid fiction had also been writers of Brexit novels shortly before the pandemic. The chapter shows that two different kinds of sequencing were often employed to make these connections: drawing on the example of Jonathan Coe’s Bourneville (2022) it argues that in some cases, writers reemployed characters, plots and settings for their Covid fiction that they had already created for their Brexit novels, thus giving rise to a formally conceived serial. Using the example of Sarah Moss’s Fell (2021) it shows that in other cases, writers used their Covid fiction to explore ideas that they had already developed in their earlier work without using the same characters or plots but demonstrating instead a measure of connection at the thematic level and thereby giving rise to a loosely connected series of works. These two forms of sequence are the primary means by which British writers of Covid fiction seek to critique the politics of the pandemic.