The Urban Pastoral – Hybridisations in Jim Crace’s Arcadia (original) (raw)

Abstract

In the early 1990s a new tendency in the British urban novel appeared which resulted in the transformation of the genre’s perception of its central subject. The atmosphere of dereliction and inner-city decay typical of the urban novels of the 1980s gave way to more optimistic points of view. This shift is particularly seen in Penelope Lively’s City of the Mind (1991), Angela Carter’s Wise Children (1991) and Jim Crace’s Arcadia (1992). The novels of both Lively and Carter have strong elements representing a paean to London’s immortal greatness, and therefore could be seen, to a certain extent, as fictionally anticipating Peter Ackroyd’s London, The Biography (2000). Both the novels also touch on the theme of the vanishing city and can be seen to reflect a very popular narrative strategy of 1990s British fiction – psychogeography. Crace’s Arcadia is a much more complex work as far as the theme of the city is concerned as it brings to bear a wide range of perspectives, such as the amb...

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