Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

Rob Spence (Edge Hill University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1980

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Earthly Powers was published in 1980, and marked a new stage in Burgess’s work. His major novels of the 1970s had been characterised by experimentation: from MF to Napoleon Symphony to Abba Abba, the impulse throughout the decade had been towards relatively brief novels with complex structures, often based on external sources: in MF, the work of Lévi-Strauss on Native American myth; in Napoleon Symphony on Beethoven’s Eroica symphony; and on an imagined meeting between Keats and Belli in Abba Abba. These novels were the most obviously experimental of this phase of Burgess’s career, and they contrast sharply with the relatively conventional Earthly Powers</…

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3219 words

Citation: Spence, Rob. "Earthly Powers". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 November 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5471, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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