Mr Chris Clarke is Postgraduate research student within English at the University of Southampton.
I studied for my BA and MA in English at the University of Southampton. I chose to pursue my research interests at Southampton having been inspired by the English department's Centre for Modern and Contemporary Writing, and its interdisciplinary approach to twentieth century themes.
My research interests include post-war British experimental fiction, modernism, and philosophy. I am working on a project exploring the experimental novels of Alan Burns, Eva Figes, B. S. Johnson and Ann Quin. My PhD project draws on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to investigate the failure of experimental writing in Britain during the 1960s and early 1970s. The project suggests ways of understanding the stuttering resurgence of modernism in post-war as faltering through its sensitivity to an ethical responsibility to other persons.
‘"A Quintessence of Calderism": fading resonances of the ethical appeal of Ann Quin's fiction' (Alternative Modernisms, Cardiff University, May 2013)