Author: Olena Boylu
Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH
ISBN: 3832555560
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
What is the role of the historical and political novel in our lives? Is it just a story from the past, or does it shape our historical consciousness? Can we rely on the information within this type of fiction? According to many historicists, we cannot. However, we can also question numerous ideologically shaped history books that look more like fiction than scientific sources. Hence, historically and politically loaded fiction has an equal chance in the formational process of our historical consciousness. Besides, through satire and humor, which a scientist omits in a history book, a novelist manages to affect its reader on a different scale and leave a deeper trace. As E.,L. Doctorow once stated, ``The historian tells you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.'' Hence, this study analyzes several significant concepts such as historiography, historical consciousness, power, its elements, and the way it operates; traces major characteristics of historical and political fiction, and determines the role of satire within them. Eventually, through the analysis of several prominent contemporary novels, it provides vivid examples of all the concepts that have been discussed.
Author: Debra Shostak
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501340050
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Fictive Fathers in the Contemporary American Novel explores the unstable construction of heteronormative white masculinity in the contemporary United States by focusing on relationships between fathers and their children. Debra Shostak reads the novels of 18 North American writers publishing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as allegories of cultural conflict and change within the nuclear family; the authors considered include Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen, John Irving, Jonathan Lethem, Carole Maso, Bobbie Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Claire Messud, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tim O'Brien, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, Mona Simpson, Jane Smiley, and Anne Tyler. These novelists portray father figures who, often literally or figuratively absent from the family scene, disrupt the familial order and their family members' identities. Shostak's close readings illuminate unexpectedly conservative, even subversive, ideological positions at the heart of these fictions. Fictive Fathers traces the eroding myth of paternal authority that sustained a patriarchal model within real American families and their literary representations.
Author: Lydia Kiesling
Publisher: MCD
ISBN: 0374718067
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 PICK. FINALIST FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR, Bookforum and Bustle. One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Debut Novels of 2018. An Amazon Best Book of the Month and named a fall read by Buzzfeed, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body Green A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent—her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”—Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity. But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world. Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.
Author: Patrick O'Donnell
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119431719
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1607
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Book Description
Fresh perspectives and eye-opening discussions of contemporary American fiction In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a focused and in-depth collection of essays on some of the most significant and influential authors and literary subjects of the last four decades. Cutting-edge entries from established and new voices discuss subjects as varied as multiculturalism, contemporary regionalisms, realism after poststructuralism, indigenous narratives, globalism, and big data in the context of American fiction from the last 40 years. The Encyclopedia provides an overview of American fiction at the turn of the millennium as well as a vision of what may come. It perfectly balances analysis, summary, and critique for an illuminating treatment of the subject matter. This collection also includes: An exciting mix of established and emerging contributors from around the world discussing central and cutting-edge topics in American fiction studies Focused, critical explorations of authors and subjects of critical importance to American fiction Topics that reflect the energies and tendencies of contemporary American fiction from the forty years between 1980 and 2020 The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020 is a must-have resource for undergraduate and graduate students of American literature, English, creative writing, and fiction studies. It will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars seeking an authoritative array of contributions on both established and newer authors of contemporary fiction.
Author: Jeff Soloway
Publisher: Infobase Holdings, Inc
ISBN: 143818199X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 48
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Book Description
Contemporary American Fiction, Volume 3 is a collection of scholarly essays and recent reviews of the best of contemporary American literary fiction, including the following titles: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green News of the World by Paulette Jiles Moonglow by Michael Chabon The Sellout by Paul Beatty and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
Author: Juan E. De Castro
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197541852
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 889
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Book Description
The Latin American novel burst onto the international literary scene with the Boom era--led by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa--and has influenced writers throughout the world ever since. García Márquez and Vargas Llosa each received the Nobel Prize in literature, and many of the best-known contemporary novelists are inspired by the region's fiction. Indeed, magical realism, the style associated with García Márquez, has left a profound imprint on African American, African, Asian, Anglophone Caribbean, and Latinx writers. Furthermore, post-Boom literature continues to garner interest, from the novels of Roberto Bolaño to the works of César Aira and Chico Buarque, to those of younger novelists such as Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Alejandro Zambra, and Valeria Luiselli. Yet, for many readers, the Latin American novel is often read in a piecemeal manner delinked from the traditions, authors, and social contexts that help explain its evolution. The Oxford Handbook of the Latin American Novel draws literary, historical, and social connections so that readers will come away understanding this literature as a rich and compelling canon. In forty-five chapters by leading and innovative scholars, the Handbook provides a comprehensive introduction, helping readers to see the region's intrinsic heterogeneity--for only with a broader view can one fully appreciate García Márquez or Bolaño. This volume charts the literary tradition of the Latin American novel from its beginnings during colonial times, its development during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, and its flourishing from the 1960s onward. Furthermore, the Handbook explores the regions, representations of identity, narrative trends, and authors that make this literature so diverse and fascinating, reflecting on the Latin American novel's position in world literature.
Author: L. Colletta
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 140398137X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165
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Book Description
Colletta uses psychoanalytic theories of joke-work and gallows humour to argue that dark humour is an important, defining characteristic of Modernism. She brings together the usual suspects alongside more often overlooked writers from the period, and asks probing questions about the relationship between a dark humour that 'revels in the non-rational, the unstable, and the fragmented, and resists easy definition and political usefulness' and the historical and social circumstances of the period. Colletta makes a compelling argument that probing deeply into the nature of humour or satire that define these 'social comedies' brings to light a more complex, and more accurate, understanding of the social changes and historical circumstances that define the modern era.
Author: Vincent B. Leitch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135217998
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 627
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Book Description
American Literary Criticism Since the 1930s fully updates Vincent B. Leitch’s classic book, American Literary Criticism from the 30s to the 80s following the development of the American academy right up to the present day. Updated throughout and with a brand new chapter, this second edition: provides a critical history of American literary theory and practice, discussing the impact of major schools and movements examines the social and cultural background to literary research, considering the role of key theories and practices provides profiles of major figures and influential texts, outlining the connections among theorists presents a new chapter on developments since the 1980s, including discussions of feminist, queer, postcolonial and ethnic criticism. Comprehensive and engaging, this book offers a crucial overview of the development of literary studies in American universities, and a springboard to further research for all those interested in the development and study of Literature.
Author: Sophia A. McClennen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137014725
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Is the comedy of Stephen Colbert simply fun or is it powerful political satire? Does it entertain viewers or does it empower them? Or does it teach us that in today's media-saturated world those binaries make no sense? Colbert's America claims that Colbert's satire fosters critical thinking about social issues, encourages active citizenship, and entertains the viewer - all at the same time. The first book to cover the various themes and features of Colbert's America offers readers insight into the powerful ways that Colbert's comedy challenges the cult of ignorance that has threatened meaningful public debate and social dialogue since 9/11.
Author: Kenneth Millard
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748629548
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
This book explores the ways in which a range of recent American novelists have handled the genre of the 'coming-of-age' novel, or the Bildungsroman. Novels of this genre characteristically dramatise the vicissitudes of growing up and the trials and tribulations of young adulthood, often presented through depictions of immediate family relationships and other social structures. This book considers a variety of different American cultures (in terms of race, class and gender) and a range of contemporary coming-of-age novels, so that aesthetic judgements about the fiction might be made in the context of the social history that fiction represents. A series of questions are asked:* Does the coming-of-age moment in these novels coincide with an interpretation of the 'fall' of America?* What kind of national commentary does it therefore facilitate?* Is the Bildungsroman a quintessentially American genre?* What can it usefully tell us about contemporary American culture? Although the focus is on the conte
