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Jonathan Coe is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary British writers. This comprehensive introduction places his work in clear historical and theoretical context, offering extensive readings of the author's ten novels from The Accidental Woman to Expo 58, including the remarkable What a Carve Up!. The book explores Coe's biography and his experimentations with narrative, genre and comedy, as well as his thematic preoccupations with history, memory, loss and nostalgia. Including a timeline of key dates and an interview with the author, it also offers an overview of the critical reception Coe's work has provoked.

Ce numéro d’Études britanniques contemporaines s’intéresse aux formes spécifiques du rire, de l’humour, de la comédie et de la satire dans la littérature et les arts britanniques des XXe et XXIe siècles, et étudie la façon dont les écrivains et artistes adoptent, transforment, redéfinissent et subvertissent ces modes tout en gardant à l’esprit leur dimension souvent ambivalente. Les articles regroupés ici explorent les rapports entre le rire, la satire et la critique politique et montrent qu’en général, les œuvres contemporaines ne reposent plus sur la fonction corrective de la satire ni sur la force d’exclusion du rire, mais privilégient une comédie portée par un élan humaniste. Un tiers du numéro est plus spécifiquement consacré à l’œuvre de Jonathan Coe. This issue of Études britanniques contemporaines focuses on the specific forms of laughter, humour, comedy and satire in 20th–and 21st–century British literature and visual arts, and examines how writers and artists adopt, transform, redefine or subvert these modes while bearing in mind their often ambivalent dimension. The articles gathered here explore the relationship between laughter, satire and political criticism, and demonstrate that contemporary works generally no longer rely on the corrective function of satire and the exclusionary power of laughter, but favour a type of comedy that is fuelled by a humanist drive. One-third of the issue is more specifically devoted to the work of Jonathan Coe.

International audience; Jonathan Coe is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary British writers. This comprehensive introduction places his work in clear historical and theoretical context, offering extensive readings of the author's ten novels from The Accidental Woman to Expo 58, including the remarkable What a Carve Up!. The book explores Coe's biography and his experimentations with narrative, genre and comedy, as well as his thematic preoccupations with history, memory, loss and nostalgia. Including a timeline of key dates and an interview with the author, it also offers an overview of the critical reception Coe's work has provoked.

International audience; Jonathan Coe is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary British writers. This comprehensive introduction places his work in clear historical and theoretical context, offering extensive readings of the author's ten novels from The Accidental Woman to Expo 58, including the remarkable What a Carve Up!. The book explores Coe's biography and his experimentations with narrative, genre and comedy, as well as his thematic preoccupations with history, memory, loss and nostalgia. Including a timeline of key dates and an interview with the author, it also offers an overview of the critical reception Coe's work has provoked.

International audience; Jonathan Coe is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary British writers. This comprehensive introduction places his work in clear historical and theoretical context, offering extensive readings of the author's ten novels from The Accidental Woman to Expo 58, including the remarkable What a Carve Up!. The book explores Coe's biography and his experimentations with narrative, genre and comedy, as well as his thematic preoccupations with history, memory, loss and nostalgia. Including a timeline of key dates and an interview with the author, it also offers an overview of the critical reception Coe's work has provoked.

This paper examines Jonathan Coe's œuvre to discuss the evolution of his modes of portraying contemporary Britain. While Coe is well known for his satirical state-of-the-nation novels and for his commitment to political fiction, his recent essays reveal his misgivings about the effectiveness of political satire and Condition-of-England novels in the new millennium. This paper will navigate between Coe's fiction and non-fiction to examine the forms political engagement may take in the contemporary British novel., Cet article parcourt l'œuvre de Jonathan Coe afin d'analyser l'évolution de ses modes de représentation de la Grande-Bretagne contemporaine. Coe est connu pour ses romans satiriques qui offrent un " état de la nation " et pour son attachement à la fiction politique, mais ses essais récents révèlent ses doutes quant à l'efficacité de la satire politique et de romans qui décrivent la condition de l'Angleterre à l'heure du nouveau millénaire. Cet article naviguera entre les écrits fictionnels et non-fictionnels de Coe pour envisager les formes que peut prendre l'engagement politique dans le roman britannique contemporain.

This paper proposes to confront the tenets of detective fiction and postmodernism in Jonathan Coe's What a Carve up! (1994), principally by focusing on one of the main assumptions related to both domains, which is that they mainly entail playfulness, either through the solving of an enigma or through parody and pastiche, and may therefore be impervious to politics and affects. The analysis of What a Carve up! will show to what extent the novel uses and abuses the codes and conventions of the whodunit in a playful way, and displays some of the specific features of postmodernism (epistemological and ontological concerns, narrative games, self-reflexivity...), so that it may be seen as an example of metafictional detective story. At the same time however, the novel proposes a satire of the social and economic ills of British society during the Thatcher years and unveils collective and epidemic crimes committed during that era. The novel thus moves beyond the enclosed space and individual crimes of classic detective fiction and beyond the supposed playfulness and self-centeredness of postmodernism to encompass a broader political, social, ethical and emotional scope., Cet article propose de confronter les principes du roman policier à ceux du postmodernisme dans What a Carve up! (1994) de Jonathan Coe, et de se concentrer plus particulièrement sur l'une des principales idées reçues communes aux deux domaines, à savoir qu'ils reposent essentiellement sur le jeu, soit par la résolution d'une énigme soit par le biais de la parodie ou du pastiche, et sont par conséquent imperméables aux enjeux politiques et aux affects. L'analyse de What a Carve up! montrera à quel point le roman use et abuse des codes et conventions du roman policier de façon ludique et déploie certaines des caractéristiques du postmodernisme (préoccupations épistémologiques et ontologiques, jeux narratifs, auto-réflexivité....), si bien qu'on peut le considérer comme un exemple de roman de détection métafictionnel. Dans le même temps toutefois, le roman propose une satire des maux sociaux et économiques de la société britannique durant les années Thatcher et met au jour des crimes collectifs en série commis durant cette période. Le roman dépasse par conséquent l'espace clos et les crimes individuels du roman de détection classique, mais aussi la dimension soit-disant strictement ludique et narcissique du postmodernisme, pour poser des questions d'ordre politique, social, éthique et émotionnel.