Fiction at its Most Novel: A Bourdieusian Analysis of the Self-Fashioning and Reception of the Goldsmiths Prize
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2024
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en
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In the aftermath of the 2011 controversy surrounding the Booker Prize jury’s prioritisation of readability over artistic achievement, the Goldsmiths Prize was established in 2013 to celebrate and reward experimental and mould-breaking fiction. This thesis adopts a Bourdieusian perspective on the self-fashioning and reception of the Goldsmiths Prize to explore the complex interplay between literary prizes and other stakeholders within the contemporary literary field. Focussing on the prize’s apparatus and the reception of Goldsmiths Prize-winning novels A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride and Cuddy by Benjamin Myers, it combines quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to answer the question how and to what extent the goals and ambitions of the Goldsmiths Prize align with its reception in the literary field. The research findings suggest that the prize struggles with the convergence of its accumulated capital into recognition and legitimacy: where professional critics seem to acknowledge the prize and recognise, either explicitly or implicitly, the type of novel it seeks to reward, the amateur reception reveals that the significance of the prize has yet to be firmly embedded in the public perception.
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Faculteit der Letteren