Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction

Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction PDF Author: Darlene Harbour Unrue
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820333549
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
My stories are fragments of a larger plan, Katherine Anne Porter once wrote. And on another occasion she praised a critic who perceived that all her work, from the very beginning, was part of an "unbroken progression, all related." In Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction, Darlene Unrue examines the encompassing themes that underlie Porter's shorter fiction and that combined to create the haunting events of her complex metaphorical novel, Ship of Fools. Porter believed that men and women are compelled toward discovering the truth about their existence, but that the nature of our world makes those truths difficult to discern. In her writing, Unrue finds, Porter explored not only this basic human need to confront the truth, but also the bewilderment and suffering that are so often the results of failing to fulfill that need. Often in Porter's fiction the movement toward truth is obstructed by the hollow beliefs and illusions that abound in the world--by the seductions of ideology and dogmatic religion, by romantic love or the vision of a golden past. Clinging to such illusions, using them to lend a false coherence to their lives, Porter's characters are led away from the hard realization that truth requires accepting the existence of the unknowable at the center of life, and that what is knowable lies within themselves. Drawing on essays, reviews, letters, and notes, as well as on the intricate fabric of the fiction, this study traces Porter's pursuit of the truth through the creation of a body of fiction in which, from fragments of life, she could assemble an honest vision of the world.

Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction

Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction PDF Author: Darlene Harbour Unrue
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820333549
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
My stories are fragments of a larger plan, Katherine Anne Porter once wrote. And on another occasion she praised a critic who perceived that all her work, from the very beginning, was part of an "unbroken progression, all related." In Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction, Darlene Unrue examines the encompassing themes that underlie Porter's shorter fiction and that combined to create the haunting events of her complex metaphorical novel, Ship of Fools. Porter believed that men and women are compelled toward discovering the truth about their existence, but that the nature of our world makes those truths difficult to discern. In her writing, Unrue finds, Porter explored not only this basic human need to confront the truth, but also the bewilderment and suffering that are so often the results of failing to fulfill that need. Often in Porter's fiction the movement toward truth is obstructed by the hollow beliefs and illusions that abound in the world--by the seductions of ideology and dogmatic religion, by romantic love or the vision of a golden past. Clinging to such illusions, using them to lend a false coherence to their lives, Porter's characters are led away from the hard realization that truth requires accepting the existence of the unknowable at the center of life, and that what is knowable lies within themselves. Drawing on essays, reviews, letters, and notes, as well as on the intricate fabric of the fiction, this study traces Porter's pursuit of the truth through the creation of a body of fiction in which, from fragments of life, she could assemble an honest vision of the world.

The Leaning Tower and Other Stories

The Leaning Tower and Other Stories PDF Author: Katherine Anne Porter
Publisher: Library of America
ISBN: 1598533363
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The classic 1944 collection of ten short stories by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author and journalist Incomparable in their dramatic clarity and emotional force, the ten gems in this collection affirm Katherine Anne Porter’s genius for writing stories, as Eudora Welty observed, “with a power that stamps them to their very last detail on the memory.” The collection includes The Old Order, a sequence of short stories that paints a devastating portrait of the racial inequities that plague life in the American South, as well as other selected stories such as “The Leaning Tower” and “The Downward Path to Wisdom”.

The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter

The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter PDF Author: Harry J. Mooney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Flowering Judas and Other Stories

Flowering Judas and Other Stories PDF Author: Katherine Anne Porter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Short stories
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description


The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter

The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter PDF Author: Harry John Mooney
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973987
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 61

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Book Description
One of the earliest, and still one of the most perceptive analyses of Katherine Anne Porter, it gives careful interpretation of the style and intent of Porter's work from 1935 through the publication and critical reception of Ship of Fools.

The Texas Legacy of Katherine Anne Porter

The Texas Legacy of Katherine Anne Porter PDF Author: James T. F. Tanner
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 9780929398228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
In this study of Porter’s work, Tanner focuses on Porter’s denial of her Texas heritage, her apparent urge to distance herself from Texas and all things Texan. He analyzes Porter’s settings and characters, emphasizing and clarifying the influence of her Texas upbringing on her creative art, exploring the conflict between the Texas Porter and the urbane-sophisticate Porter. Born in Indian Creek, Texas, in 1890, Katherine Anne Porter was always a Texas writer, even though she roamed widely, and seemed to represent, for many readers, a more Southern and genteel facet of Texas culture than they were prepared to accept. Tanner deals with Porter as a Texas story-teller, who, her wanderings over the earth notwithstanding, was a Texas writer first and last.

Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools PDF Author: Katherine Anne Porter
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504003535
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
This “dazzling” National Book Award finalist set aboard an ocean liner in 1931 reflects the passions and prejudices that sparked World War II (San Francisco Chronicle). August 1931. An ocean liner bound for Germany sets out from the Mexican port city of Veracruz. The ship’s first-class passengers include an idealistic young American painter and her lover; a Spanish dance troupe with a sideline in larceny; an elderly German couple and their fat, seasick bulldog; and a boisterous band of Cuban medical students. As the Vera journeys across the Atlantic, the incidents and intrigues of several dozen passengers and crew members come into razor-sharp focus. The result is a richly drawn portrait of the human condition in all its complexity and a mesmerizing snapshot of a world drifting toward disaster. Written over a span of twenty years and based on the diary Katherine Anne Porter kept during a similar ocean voyage, Ship of Fools was the bestselling novel of 1962 and the inspiration for an Academy Award–winning film starring Vivien Leigh. It is a masterpiece of American literature as captivating today as when it was first published more than a half century ago. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Katherine Anne Porter, including rare photos from the University of Maryland Libraries.

The Ambivalent Art of Katherine Anne Porter

The Ambivalent Art of Katherine Anne Porter PDF Author: Mary Titus
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820327565
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"Throughout her long career, writes Titus, Porter "repeatedly probed cultural arguments about female creativity, a woman's maternal legacy, romantic love, and sexual identity, always with startling acuity, and often with painful ambivalence." Much of her writing, then, serves as a medium for what Titus terms Porter's "gender-thinking" - her sustained examination of the interrelated issues of art, gender, and identity.".

Critical Essays on Katherine Anne Porter

Critical Essays on Katherine Anne Porter PDF Author: Darlene Harbour Unrue
Publisher: Twayne Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A collection of essays that examine the writings of twentieth-century American author Katherine Anne Porter, including reviews and critical analyses of her fiction and non-fiction works.

Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter PDF Author: Janis P. Stout
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813915685
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Katherine Anne Porter's life closely paralleled that of her century not only in its span (1890-1980) but in its interests and contradictions. A communist sympathizer who became a quasi fascist; a cosmopolitan who embraced southern agrarianism, a femme fatale whose writings nonetheless evince feminist feeling, Porter embodied, often at their extremes, the major currents of her time and ours. In this new biography Janis P. Stout argues that these inconsistencies can be viewed as part and parcel of modernism itself. Drawing on Porter's rich and voluminous correspondence as well as published works, Stout here sets out to craft an intellectual biography of a woman who, by her own admission, was "not really an intellectual". Stout reveals the extent of Porter's involvement in events of public significance and her interactions with prominent figures, from President Alvaro Obregon of Mexico in 1920 to Hermann Goering in Berlin in 1931, to Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Allen Tate, and others in the 1930s and 1940s, to members of the Lyndon Johnson White House in the 1960s. Against the backdrop of world war and cold war, Porter's conflicting views on politics, race, religion, and feminism reflected Porter's ambivalence toward her own Texas roots.