Hi Alison
But there are loads of contemporary writers who address moral themes,
even
> directly. The danger of doing so is of course didactic or moralising
> writing. If we're talking of playwrights, Harold Pinter's still
> alive, and
> so is Howard Barker, who is waging a one-man war against humanistic ,
> liberal theatre that takes a moral stance as a priori, thus shutting
> down
> huge avenues of moral questioning in favour of an agreed consensus
> about
> what's right and wrong. Lately I've been getting my GMT fixes via an
> SFF
> writer called China Mieville, whose most recent book, Iron Council, is
> a
> fantasy based on the trade union movement.
>
And who knows savagery when he makes it bite 'us.' A socialist fantasy
writer: wow, but it's true. His work is tough in a way few fantasies
are. But that doesn't mean that the best of them aren't also full of
GMTs (& I include yours among those). Moral explorations seem more
important to me than a priori stances....
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
And still property is theft.
Phyllis Webb
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