Mediating and Capitalizing on Cultural Competence: the Contemporary British Novel

My intention to analyse British novels in terms of “cultural competence” (which should explain the immediate transfer between texts and their contemporary readers) primarily considers reading strategies (new historicism, cultural materialism and cultural studies) able to explain the practicality with current culture the novel genre circulates for the use of its present-day public. (…)The literary text negotiates cultural meaning, thus building associative routines relating to knowledge and discourse, i.e. to social practice. As such, the practice of reading literature seems to be institutionally or otherwise given. To the extent to which literacy is presented as a must for social communication in narratives, the novels are themselves the grandest narratives ever, i.e. prescriptive codes of the social intercourse. Part of the British genealogy of the process may be traced down for Peter Ackroyd, and, respectively, David Lodge, to John Fowles.