Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

Rob Spence (Edge Hill University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1980

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Earthly Powers

was published in 1980, and marked a new stage in Burgess’s work. His major novels of the 1970s had been characterised by experimentation: from

Napoleon Symphony

Abba Abba

, the impulse throughout the decade had been towards relatively brief novels with complex structures, often based on external sources: in

, the work of Lévi-Strauss on Native American myth; in

Napoleon Symphony

on Beethoven’s

Eroica

symphony; and on an imagined meeting between Keats and Belli in

Abba Abba

. These novels were the most obviously experimental of this phase of Burgess’s career, and they contrast sharply with the relatively conventional

Earthly Powers

, which ranks second only to

A Clockwork Orange

in the amount of attention it has received. This novel too, uses external sources,…

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3219 words

Citation: Spence, Rob. "Earthly Powers". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 November 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5471, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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