Dreams, Nightmares and Empty Signifiers

is the first study of contemporary literary representations of the English country house. The book analyses contemporary novels, including Kazuo Ishiguro’s , Ian McEwan’s and Sarah Waters’ by situating them in a broader context of manorial literary tradition.

Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga is Assistant Professor of English Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Sk?odowska University in Lublin. She is the author of a book study on Virginia Woolf’s novels (2006). Her main research interests are modernist and postmodernist fiction, semiotics of space and urban theory and representation.

Configured against a rich background of the existing theoretical and critical reflection, the book by Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga successfully attempts to integrate the often ambivalent ideologies and contradictory political stances ascribed to the country house in various critical readings by approaching it as an element of the semiosphere with dynamic shifts of discourses, values and meanings. Presenting the country-house topos as part of broadly conceived literary tradition, Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga boldly redefines the theoretical paradigms so far dominant in the critical discourse. (Jadwiga W?grodzka, University of Gda?sk)

Contents: English country house in literature – Country house novel – Contemporary novel – Novel of manners – Gothic fiction – Metafiction – Julian Fellowes – Alan Hollinghurst Alan Hollinghurst – Kazuo Ishiguro – Sarah Waters – Sarah Waters – Ian McEwan – Toby Litt