Introduction: Contemporary Literary Renaissances

Abstract

This issue of Études britanniques contemporaines emanates from the contributions to a workshop of the Société d’Études Anglaises Contemporaines (SEAC), organised by Catherine Bernard at the 2021 conference of the Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur. The conference revolved around the issue of ‘RenaissanceS’ and it gave contributors the opportunity to explore the influence of the Renaissance period on contemporary literary productions and to examine the modes of aesthetic renewal, reinvention and revival of past forms, subjects and literary genres. In addition to articles engaging with the notion of rebirth in contemporary novels and poems, this issue includes an essay on the concept of exhaustion in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame.

Keywords

• renaissance
• reinvention
• neo-Victorianism
• literary genres
• recovery
• haunting