Abstract
In the early 1990s a new tendency in the British urban novel appeared which resulted in the transformation of the genre’s perception of its central subject. Crace’s Arcadia is a complex work as far as the theme of the city is concerned as it brings to bear a wide range of perspectives, such as the ambivalent symbiosis of the rural and the urban, the archetypes of modern city dwellers and the importance of the agora for a functioning urban social life.
Moreover, it integrates a new, celebratory narrative voice with a bitterly satirical one, more typical of the previous decade’s works. The setting allows its author to employ a skillful mixture of various genres, namely the psychological novel, sociological and urban studies and the quasi or mock-pastoral.
The aim of this article is to show how Crace’s Arcadia contributed to the transformation of the British urban novel and, consequently, to the overall process of the hybridisation of the genre of the novel in general.