Informed by trauma studies and the ethics of literature, this book visits vulnerability in the contemporary British novel, considering vulnerability in its relation to poetics, politics, ethics, and trauma. Chapters on romance, elegy, the ghost story, and the state-of-the-nation novel draw from the fields including trauma studies, affect theory, the ethics of alterity, the ethics of care, and the ethics of vulnerability. Showcasing how the contemporary novel is the privileged site of the expression and performance of vulnerability and vulnerable form, the volume broaches a poetics of vulnerability based on categories such as testimony, loss, unknowing, temporal disarray, and performance.

Jean-Michel Ganteau is Professor of English Literature at Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III, France

Introduction 1. Romance Strategies 2. Elegy 3. Ghost Texts 4. State of the Nation Conclusion