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Contemporary culture is caught in a representational bind: fascinated by—and yet tired of—its tendency towards artifice and involution, whilst simultaneously attracted to—and yet sceptical of—the idea of the authentic. The hermeneutical confusion brought about by this self-identity crisis has given rise to a semiotic indistinction around artificiality and authenticity, leaving the observer trapped not by their bipolarity, but caught within their layers as they interleave. This essay explores the ramifications of this through an examination of the relationship between Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and Will Self's Dorian: An Imitation (2002). Identifying the imitative intent of Self's rewrite as problematic, the essay situates the twentieth-century's shift towards an ethic of private authenticity over sincerity as indicative of a significant change in self and social understanding. However, the demands and desires of late capitalism have made it increasingly difficult to isolate what that ...

This essay argues that the issue of what it means to live an authentic life in the twenty-first century has been a significant trope in recent British fiction. Negotiating between universalizing humanist perspectives and the radically individualizing politics of late-capitalist philosophy, Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts pose the question of whether any authenticity of the self can be imagined in an increasingly globalized, mediated, and digitalized world. Contextualizing these novels within contemporary British writing, this essay locates a profound psychological anxiety as the dominant mode for engaging with authentic subjectification.

Daniel LEA and Berthold SCHOENE: Masculinity in Transition: An Introduction Susan BROOK: Engendering Rebellion: The Angry Young Man, Class and Masculinity Richard HORNSEY: Of Public Libraries and Paperbacks: "Deviant" Masculinity and the Spatial Practices of Reading in Post-War London Gill PLAIN: Hard Nuts to Crack: Devolving Masculinities in Contemporary Scottish Fiction Neil McMILLAN: Heroes and Zeroes: Monologism and Masculinism in Scottish Men's Writing of the 1970s and Beyond Emma PARKER: No Man's Land: Masculinity and Englishness in Graham Swift's Last Orders Rhiannon DAVIES: Enduring McEwan Antony ROWLAND: Patriarchy, Male Power and the Psychopath in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy Irene ROSE: Heralding New Possibilities: Female Masculinity in Jackie Kay's Trumpet Emma LIGGINS: Alan Hollinghurst and Metropolitan Gay Identities Notes on Contributors

J.G. Farrell's novel, Troubles, presents the collision between public and private histories and dramatises the moment when historical action impacts upon the individual consciousness of those undergoing that action. This paper argues that Troubles displays an epistemological structure based around the search for reliable information, which parallels the concomitant quest for knowledge about the Troubles experienced by the characters. This hiatus in information is passed onto the reader, who is required to interpret the text with unreliable and unstable resources, a situation exemplified in the fragmented chronology of the first paragraphs, which this paper examines in depth., Troubles, le roman de J.G. Farrell, présente la collision entre l'histoire publique et l'histoire privée et met en scène le moment où l'action historique frappe le simple particulier qui la subit. Cette étude montre que Troubles est sous-tendu par une structure épistémologique fondée sur la quête d'informations sûres faisant pendant à celles des personnages, sur la guerre qu'ils vivent. La même information lacunaire est livrée au lecteur qui doit interpréter le texte avec des supports instables, (ce qu'illustre la chronologie fragmentée des premiers paragraphes)., Lea Daniel. Troubles and J. G. Farrell's Inferiority Complex. In: Études irlandaises, n°24-1, 1999. pp. 79-89.