摘要：Joseph Brooker’s study Literature of the 1980s After the Watershed comes as the ninth volume in the Edinburgh History of Twentieth-Century Literature in Great Britain series, which in its essential disposition apparently follows what Ian Jack characterised as ‘our entire contemporary tendency to slice time in ten-year cycles’ (209) that are so neatly ordered on the historical trajectory of literature in Britain, perceived as linear. In the Introduction to his survey of the decade whose long-lasting influences were being examined while the decade itself still lasted and whose contemporaries allegedly shared the uncanny yet poignant feeling that it may never be truly over, Brooker states his intention not only to offer an account of different literary texts and their authors that defined the 1980s, but also to bring forth ‘the historical and social contexts that shaped writing in this period’ (1). In response to these influences, of which, as Brooker will demonstrate, there was an abundance, the authors of the decade reacted with prolific production of various modes of writing. Although in his analysis Brooker, in a detailed and reader-friendly approach, deftly separates these various forms, focusing first on the novels and subsequently on poetry, drama and screenwriting, he by no means omits the unifying factors that serve to emphasise unity and coherence of any given literary period, even one this short – that is, the themes around which all these literary expressions are gathered. These dominant themes are organised under separate headings (titled Generations, Disaffections, Modes, Belongings and Commitments) in which the author follows dominant trends, philosophies and poetics of the period. However, despite all the said diversity and literary richness, the most ‘pervasive, almost inescapable’ theme Brooker recognises is that of the profound and all-encompassing ‘influence of the Conservative governments that administered Britain for the entire decade’ (2), which he tackles and dissects in the Introduction. Thatcherism is thus deconstructed in terms of the historical perspective and its associations with enterprise, market, and freedom-related issues, but also in terms of the ostensible and undisputed contradictions pertaining to the cultural change, deterioration in Britain’s moral standards and repressive measures that affected the everyday life of the nation.
