The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction

The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction PDF Author: Stacey Olster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108394094
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction explores fiction written over the last thirty years in the context of the profound political, historical, and cultural changes that have distinguished the contemporary period. Focusing on both established and emerging writers - and with chapters devoted to the American historical novel, regional realism, the American political novel, the end of the Cold War and globalization, 9/11, borderlands and border identities, race, and the legacy of postmodern aesthetics - this Introduction locates contemporary American fiction at the intersection of a specific time and long-standing traditions. In the process, it investigates the entire concept of what constitutes an “American” author while exploring the vexed, yet resilient, nature of what the concept of home has come to signify in so much writing today. This wide-ranging study will be invaluable to students, instructors, and general readers alike.

The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction

The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction PDF Author: Stacey Olster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108394094
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction explores fiction written over the last thirty years in the context of the profound political, historical, and cultural changes that have distinguished the contemporary period. Focusing on both established and emerging writers - and with chapters devoted to the American historical novel, regional realism, the American political novel, the end of the Cold War and globalization, 9/11, borderlands and border identities, race, and the legacy of postmodern aesthetics - this Introduction locates contemporary American fiction at the intersection of a specific time and long-standing traditions. In the process, it investigates the entire concept of what constitutes an “American” author while exploring the vexed, yet resilient, nature of what the concept of home has come to signify in so much writing today. This wide-ranging study will be invaluable to students, instructors, and general readers alike.

The Cambridge Companion to American Fiction After 1945

The Cambridge Companion to American Fiction After 1945 PDF Author: John N. Duvall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521196310
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
A comprehensive 2011 guide to the genres, historical contexts, cultural diversity and major authors of American fiction since the Second World War.

The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First Century American Fiction

The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First Century American Fiction PDF Author: Joshua Miller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108838278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
This volume explores the most exciting trends in 21st century US fiction's genres, themes, and concepts.

Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism

Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism PDF Author: Bryan M. Santin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108974236
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Bryan M. Santin examines over a half-century of intersection between American fiction and postwar conservatism. He traces the shifting racial politics of movement conservatism to argue that contemporary perceptions of literary form and aesthetic value are intrinsically connected to the rise of the American Right. Instead of casting postwar conservatives as cynical hustlers or ideological fanatics, Santin shows how the long-term rhetorical shift in conservative notions of literary value and prestige reveal an aesthetic antinomy between high culture and low culture. This shift, he argues, registered and mediated the deeper foundational antinomy structuring postwar conservatism itself: the stable social order of traditionalism and the creative destruction of free-market capitalism. Postwar conservatives produced, in effect, an ambivalent double register in the discourse of conservative literary taste that sought to celebrate neo-aristocratic manifestations of cultural capital while condemning newer, more progressive manifestations revolving around racial and ethnic diversity.

The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body

The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body PDF Author: Travis M. Foster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110889609X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The human body has been depicted in a variety of ways across a range of cultural and historical locations. It has been described, variously, as a biological entity, clothing for the soul, a site of cultural production, a psychosexual construct, and a material encumbrance. Each of these different approaches brings with it a range of anthropological, political, theological, and psychological discourses that explore and construct identities and subject positions. This Companion examines connections between American literature and bodies from the eighteenth century through the present. It reveals the singular way that literature can help us understand the body's entanglement within social and biological influences, and it traces the body's existence within histories of race, gender, and ability. This volume details the genres, critical fields, and interpretive practices that best facilitate the analysis of bodies in the full span of American literary imaginings.

The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment

The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment PDF Author: Sarah Ensor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108841902
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Offers an overview of American environmental literature across genres and time periods, introducing readers to a range of ecocritical methodologies.

Coming of Age in Contemporary American Fiction

Coming of Age in Contemporary American Fiction PDF 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

The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism

The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism PDF Author: Pericles Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316224309
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
More than a century after its beginnings, modernism still has the power to shock, alienate or challenge readers. Modernist art and literature remain thought of as complex and difficult. This introduction explains in a readable, lively style how modernism emerged, how it is defined, and how it developed in different forms and genres. Pericles Lewis offers students a survey of literature and art in England, Ireland and Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. He also provides an overview of critical thought on modernism and its continuing influence on the arts today, reflecting the interests of current scholarship in the social and cultural contexts of modernism. The comparative perspective on Anglo-American and European modernism shows how European movements have influenced the development of English-language modernism. Illustrated with works of art and featuring suggestions for further study, this is the ideal introduction to understanding and enjoying modernist literature and art.

The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature PDF Author: Yogita Goyal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107085209
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
This book provides a new map of American literature in the global era, analyzing the multiple meanings of transnationalism.

The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction

The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction PDF Author: Bran Nicol
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139483110
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Postmodern fiction presents a challenge to the reader: instead of enjoying it passively, the reader has to work to understand its meanings, to think about what fiction is, and to question their own responses. Yet this very challenge makes postmodern writing so much fun to read and rewarding to study. Unlike most introductions to postmodernism and fiction, this book places the emphasis on literature rather than theory. It introduces the most prominent British and American novelists associated with postmodernism, from the 'pioneers', Beckett, Borges and Burroughs, to important post-war writers such as Pynchon, Carter, Atwood, Morrison, Gibson, Auster, DeLillo, and Ellis. Designed for students and clearly written, this Introduction explains the preoccupations, styles and techniques that unite postmodern authors. Their work is characterized by a self-reflexive acknowledgement of its status as fiction, and by the various ways in which it challenges readers to question common-sense and commonplace assumptions about literature.