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Sir Kingsley William Amis was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as Lucky Jim (1954), One Fat Englishman (1963), Ending Up (1974), Jake's Thing (1978) and The Old Devils (1986).
Otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in Manga Burikko.
The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working- and middle-class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading figures included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis; other popular figures included John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, and John Wain. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer in order to promote Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger. It is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose Angry Young Man was published in 1951.
Bishōnen is a Japanese term literally meaning "beautiful youth (boy)" and describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in East Asia: a young man of androgynous beauty. This word originated from the Tang dynasty poem Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup by Du Fu. It has always shown the strongest manifestation in Japanese pop culture, gaining in popularity due to the androgynous glam rock bands of the 1970s, but it has roots in ancient Japanese literature, the androsocial and androerotic ideals of the medieval Chinese imperial court and intellectuals, and Indian aesthetic concepts carried over from Hinduism, imported with Buddhism to China. Today, bishōnen are very popular among girls and women in Japan. Reasons for this social phenomenon may include the unique male and female social relationships found within the genre. Some have theorized that bishōnen provide a non-traditional outlet for gender relations. Moreover, it breaks down stereotypes surrounding feminine male characters. These are often depicted with very strong martial arts abilities, sports talent, high intelligence, dandy fashion, or comedic flair, traits that are usually assigned to the hero/protagonist role.
The Uranians were a late-19th-century and early-20th-century clandestine group of up to several dozen male homosexual poets and prose writers who principally wrote on the subject of the love of adolescent boys. In a strict definition they were an English literary and cultural movement; in a broader definition there were also American Uranians. The movement reached its peak between the late 1880s and mid 1890s, but has been regarded as stretching between 1858, when William Johnson Cory's poetry collection Ionica appeared, and 1930, the year of publication of Samuel Elsworth Cottam's Cameos of Boyhood and Other Poems and of E. E. Bradford's last collection, Boyhood.
Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers, while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism. Novels identified as chick lit typically address romantic relationships, female friendships, and workplace struggles in humorous and lighthearted ways. Typical protagonists are urban, heterosexual women in their late twenties and early thirties: the 1990s chick lit heroine represented an evolution of the traditional romantic heroine in her assertiveness, financial independence and enthusiasm for conspicuous consumption.
Women's fiction is an umbrella term for women-centered books that focus on women's life experience that are marketed to female readers, and includes many mainstream novels or women's rights books. It is distinct from women's writing, which refers to literature written by women. There exists no comparable label in English for works of fiction that are marketed to men.
A rivethead or rivet head is a person associated with the industrial dance music scene. In stark contrast to the original industrial culture, whose performers and heterogeneous audience were sometimes referred to as "industrialists", the rivethead scene is a coherent youth culture closely linked to a discernible fashion style. The scene emerged in the late 1980s on the basis of electro-industrial, EBM, and industrial rock music. The associated dress style draws on military fashion and punk aesthetics with hints of fetish wear, mainly inspired by the scene's musical protagonists.
Colonel Sun is a novel by Kingsley Amis published by Jonathan Cape on 28 March 1968 under the pseudonym "Robert Markham". Colonel Sun is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's 1964 death. Before writing the novel, Amis wrote two other Bond related works, the literary study The James Bond Dossier and the humorous The Book of Bond. Colonel Sun centres on the fictional British Secret Service operative James Bond and his mission to track down the kidnappers of M, his superior at the Secret Service. During the mission he discovers a communist Chinese plot to cause an international incident. Bond, assisted by a Greek spy working for the Russians, finds M on a small Aegean island, rescues him and kills the two main plotters: Colonel Sun Liang-tan and a former Nazi commander, Von Richter.
Lad culture was a media-driven, principally British and Irish subculture of the 1990s and the early 2000s. The term lad culture continues to be used today to refer to collective, boorish or misogynistic behaviour by young heterosexual men, particularly university students.
Gynocriticism or gynocritics is the term coined in the seventies by Elaine Showalter to describe a new literary project intended to construct "a female framework for the analysis of women's literature".
The James Bond Dossier (1965), by Kingsley Amis, is a critical analysis of the James Bond novels. Amis dedicated the book to friend and background collaborator, the poet and historian Robert Conquest. Later, after Ian Fleming's death, Amis was commissioned as the first continuation novelist for the James Bond novel series, writing Colonel Sun (1968) under the pseudonym Robert Markham. The James Bond Dossier was the first, formal, literary study of the James Bond character. More recent studies of Fleming's secret agent and his world include The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen (2001), by the historian Jeremy Black.
Lad mag was a term principally used in the UK in the 1990s and early 2000s to describe a then-popular type of lifestyle magazine for younger, heterosexual men, focusing on "sex, sport, gadgets and grooming tips". The lad mag was notable as a new type of magazine; previously, lifestyle magazines had been almost entirely bought by women. It was the central cultural component of 1990s lad culture. The rapid decline of the lad mag in the late 1990s/early 2000s is generally associated with the rise of the Internet which provided much of the same content for free.
Fratire is a type of 21st-century fiction literature written for and marketed to young men in a politically incorrect and overtly masculine fashion. The term was coined following the popularity of works by George Ouzounian and Tucker Max. Described as a satirical celebration of traditional masculinity, the genre has been criticized for allegedly promoting sexism and misogyny.
Metrosexual is a term for a man who is especially meticulous about his personal style, grooming and appearance. It is often used to refer to heterosexual men who are perceived to be effeminate rather than strictly adhering to stereotypical masculinity standards. Nevertheless, the term is generally ambiguous on the assigned birth sex and sexual orientation of a man; it can apply to cisgender or transgender men, and it can apply to heterosexual, gay or bisexual men.
Grunge lit is an Australian literary genre usually applied to fictional or semi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchised young people living in suburban or inner-city surroundings, or in "in-between" spaces that fall into neither category. It was typically written by "new, young authors" who examined "gritty, dirty, real existences", of lower-income young people, whose egocentric or narcissistic lives revolve around a nihilistic or "slacker" pursuit of casual sex, recreational drug use and alcohol, which are used to escape boredom. The marginalized characters are able to stay in these "in-between" settings and deal with their "abject bodies". Grunge lit has been described as both a sub-set of dirty realism and an offshoot of Generation X literature. The term "grunge" is a reference to the US rock music genre of grunge.
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to support themselves in this way or write as an avocation. Most novelists struggle to have their debut novel published, but once published they often continue to be published, although very few become literary celebrities, thus gaining prestige or a considerable income from their work.
Bro culture is a subculture of young people who spend time partying with others like themselves. Although the original image of the bro lifestyle is associated with sports apparel and fraternities, it lacks a consistent definition. Most aspects vary regionally, such as in California, where it overlaps with surf culture. It often refers to a culture of machismo but sometimes also a darker "hyper masculinity" including "binge drinking, sexism, rape culture". Oxford Dictionaries have noted that bros frequently self-identify with neologisms containing the word "bro" as a prefix or suffix.
Prick is a vulgar word for 'penis' as well as a pejorative term used to refer to a despicable or contemptible individual. It is generally considered offensive, though in the past it has been used as a term of endearment. Its history as a euphemism for 'penis' goes back to the 1500s and has been used in wordplay by Shakespeare and other writers who have combined the vulgarism with the standard meaning of the noun, which means the act of piercing or puncturing. Most linguists believe it has been used as a direct insult only since 1929.
Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, and violent. The term is inspired by the tagline of the tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war."
References
- ↑ ""Google Books Ngram Viewer"".
- 1 2 3 "Ladlit". by Elaine Showalter in On Modern Fiction ed. by Zachary Leader and published by Oxford University Press.
- ↑ "The 'Lad Lit' dilemma : institutional influences on creative writing practice" .Masters by Research thesis, Queensland University of Technology. by Martin, Samuel James Louis (2008);
- ↑ The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (3 ed.)by Chris Baldick;
- ↑ Ladlit -- an essay by Elaine Showalter that appears in On Modern Fiction edited by Zachary Leader and published by Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Miller, Laura (23 May 2004). "The Last word; oh lad, poor lad". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 13 September 2021.