Contexts, Traditions, and Placing Christine Brooke-Rose

Abstract Up to now I have analysed Christine Brooke-Rose’s fiction on its owns terms according to broad divisions in the techniques and themes which characterize it. I demonstrated in Part I that a grasp of contemporary French thought is crucial to an understanding of the intellectual context of Brooke-Rose’s novels. But it is also necessary to view them in terms of the British literary institutions which produce, market, and evaluate them, and through the eyes of the public which does or does not read them. Her novels consciously position themselves on the borders between semantic fields, a topos which invites comparison with her own situation as a writer: since the 1960s she has participated in the liiterary cultures of both Britain and France, and the implications of this liminal position are numerous. The present chapter will examine Brooke-Rose’s position vis-a-vis the institutions of literature in which her writing has been involved. Chapter 6 will then study the relationship between her novels and post-war experimental fiction in the two countries.