The New Puritans was a
literary movement ascribed to the contributors to a 2000 anthology of
short stories
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
entitled ''All Hail the New Puritans'', edited by
Nicholas Blincoe
Nicholas Blincoe is an English author, critic and screenwriter. He is the author of six novels: ''Acid Casuals'' (1995), ''Jello Salad'' (1997), ''Manchester Slingback'' (1998), ''The Dope Priest'' (1999), ''White Mice'' (2002), and ''Burning P ...
and
Matt Thorne. The project is said to have been inspired by the
Dogme 95
Dogme 95 is a 1995 avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity" ( da, kyskhedsløfter). These were rules to create films ...
manifesto for
cinematic minimalism and authenticity. The young writers in the anthology deliberately eschewed many of the devices favoured by the pre-eminent British literary generation exemplified by
Julian Barnes
Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with '' The Sense of an Ending'', having been shortlisted three times previously with '' Flaubert's Parrot'', ''England, England'', and '' A ...
,
Martin Amis and
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and We ...
.
Manifesto
The 10-point manifesto reads:
# Primarily storytellers, we are dedicated to the narrative form.
# We are prose writers and recognise that prose is the dominant form of expression. For this reason we shun poetry and poetic licence in all its forms.
# While acknowledging the value of genre fiction, whether classical or modern, we will always move towards new openings, rupturing existing genre expectations.
# We believe in textual simplicity and vow to avoid all devices of voice: rhetoric, authorial asides.
# In the name of clarity, we recognise the importance of temporal linearity and eschew flashbacks, dual temporal narratives and foreshadowing.
# We believe in grammatical purity and avoid any elaborate punctuation.
# We recognise that published works are also historical documents. As fragments of our time, all our texts are dated and set in the present day. All products, places, artists and objects named are real.
# As faithful representation of the present, our texts will avoid all improbable or unknowable speculations on the past or the future.
# We are moralists, so all texts feature a recognisable ethical reality.
# Nevertheless, our aim is integrity of expression, above and beyond any commitment to form.
The 15 contributors to the anthology included
Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer (born 5 June 1958) is an English author. He has written a number of novels and non-fiction books, some of which have won literary awards.
Personal background
Dyer was born and raised in Cheltenham, England, as the only child of a ...
,
Alex Garland
Alexander Medawar Garland (born 26 May 1970) is an English writer and filmmaker. He rose to prominence as a novelist in the late 1990s with his novel '' The Beach'', which led some critics to call Garland a key voice of Generation X. He subsequ ...
,
Daren King,
Toby Litt
Toby Litt is an English writer and academic in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London.
Life
Litt was born in Ampthill in 1968. He was educated at Bedford Modern School, read English at Worcester College, Ox ...
,
Tony White, Rebecca Ray,
Simon Lewis,
Ben Richards and
Scarlett Thomas. Reviews for the book were mixed, with some critics confused as to the intentions of the project.
3ammagazine.com
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New Puritanism has not been espoused by any well-known writers since the book's publication, and the contributors have not collaborated since, although several of them contributed to the literary magazine ''Zembla'' (2003–2005).
See also
* Dogme 95
Dogme 95 is a 1995 avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity" ( da, kyskhedsløfter). These were rules to create films ...
* Stuckism
Stuckism () is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art.[New Sincerity
New Sincerity (closely related to and sometimes described as synonymous with post-postmodernism) is a trend in music, aesthetics, literary fiction, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy that generally describes creative works ...]
* Post-postmodernism
Post-postmodernism is a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism.
Periodization
Most scholars would agree that modernism beg ...
* Pseudorealism
* Remodernism
References
{{reflist
External links
James Wood's review of ''All Hail the New Puritans'' in ''The Guardian'', September 16, 2000
* ttps://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/sep/05/arelitblogsmakingwritersri Later assessment on Guardian Books Blog
British literary movements
2000 introductions