Download or read book Romantic Postmodernism in American Fiction written by Eberhard Alsen and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 1996 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for teachers and students of American Literature, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of romantic tendencies in postmodernist American fiction. The book challenges the opinion expressed in the Columbia History of the American Novel (1991) and propagated by many influential scholars that the mainstream of postmodernist fiction is represented by the disjunctive and nihilistic work of such writers as Kathy Acker, Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover. Professor Alsen disagrees. He contends that this kind of fiction is not read and taught much outside an isolated but powerful circle in the academic community. It is the two-part thesis of Professor Alsen's book that the mainstream of postmodernist fiction consists of the widely read work of the Nobel Prize laureates Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison and other similar writers and that this mainstream fiction is essentially romantic. To support his argument, Professor Alsen analyzes representative novels by Saul Bellow, J.D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, the later John Barth, Alice Walker, William Kennedy, and Paul Auster. Professor Alsen demonstrates that the traits which distinguish the fiction of the romantic postmodernists from the fiction of their disunctive and nihilist colleagues include a vision of life that is a form of philosophical idealism, an organic view of art, modes of storytelling that are reminiscent of the nineteenth-century romance, and such themes as the nature of sin or evil, the negative effects of technology on the soul, and the quest for transcendence.
Download or read book Romantic Postmodernism in American Fiction written by Alsen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-21 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for teachers and students of American Literature, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of romantic tendencies in postmodernist American fiction. The book challenges the opinion expressed in the Columbia History of the American Novel (1991) and propagated by many influential scholars that the mainstream of postmodernist fiction is represented by the disjunctive and nihilistic work of such writers as Kathy Acker, Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover. Professor Alsen disagrees. He contends that this kind of fiction is not read and taught much outside an isolated but powerful circle in the academic community. It is the two-part thesis of Professor Alsen's book that the mainstream of postmodernist fiction consists of the widely read work of the Nobel Prize laureates Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison and other similar writers and that this mainstream fiction is essentially romantic. To support his argument, Professor Alsen analyzes representative novels by Saul Bellow, J.D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, the later John Barth, Alice Walker, William Kennedy, and Paul Auster. Professor Alsen demonstrates that the traits which distinguish the fiction of the romantic postmodernists from the fiction of their disunctive and nihilist colleagues include a vision of life that is a form of philosophical idealism, an organic view of art, modes of storytelling that are reminiscent of the nineteenth-century romance, and such themes as the nature of sin or evil, the negative effects of technology on the soul, and the quest for transcendence.
Download or read book Romanticism and Postmodernism written by Edward Larrissy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-08-28 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The persistence of Romantic thought and literary practice into the late twentieth century is evident in many contexts, from the philosophical and ideological abstractions of literary theory to the thematic and formal preoccupations of contemporary fiction and poetry. Though the precise meaning of the Romantic legacy is contested, it remains stubbornly difficult to move beyond. This collection of essays by prominent critics and literary theorists was first published in 1999, and explores the continuing impact of Romanticism on a variety of authors and genres, including John Barth, William Gibson, and John Ashbery, while writers from the Romantic and Victorian period include Wordsworth, Byron and Emily Brontë. Many critics have assumed that the forms and modes of feeling associated with the Romantic period continued to influence the cultural history of the the first half of the twentieth century. This was the first book to consider the mutual impact of postmodernism and Romanticism.
Download or read book Postmodernism in American Literature written by Manfred Pütz and published by Darmstadt : Thesen Verlag. This book was released on 1984 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Puritanism to Postmodernism written by Richard Ruland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.
Download or read book American Fiction Modernism Postmodernism Popular Culture and Metafiction written by Jaroslav Kušnír and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jaroslav Kušnír’s book American Fiction: Modernism-Postmodernism, Popular Culture, and Metafiction is a sequel to his previous study on American postmodern fiction entitled Poetika americkej postmodernej prózy: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme [Poetics of American Fiction: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme]. Prešov: Impreso, 2001. It explores various aspects of American postmodernist fiction as manifested in the works by Richard Brautigan, Donald Barthelme and other American postmodernist authors such as Robert Coover, E. L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster. Analyzing various short stories and novels, the author shows differences between modernist and postmodernist literature in the works of Donald Barthelme; the way postmodern parodies of popular literary genres give a critique of some aspects of American cultural identity and experience (the American Dream, individualism, consumerism); and he also shows different ways postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster create metafictional effect as one of the most significant aspects of postmodern literature.
Download or read book After Postmodernism written by Christopher K. Coffman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several of American literature’s most prominent authors, and many of their most perceptive critics and reviewers, argue that fiction of the last quarter century has turned away from the tendencies of postmodernist writing. Yet, the nature of that turn, and the defining qualities of American fiction after postmodernism, remain less than clear. This volume identifies four prominent trends of the contemporary scene: the recovery of the real, a rethinking of historical engagement, a preoccupation with materiality, and a turn to the planetary. Readings of works by various leading figures, including Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, A.M. Homes, Lance Olsen, Richard Powers, William T. Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace, support a variety of arguments about this recent revitalization of American literature. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Textual Practice.
Download or read book From Puritanism to Postmodernism written by Richard Ruland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.
Download or read book From Romantic Irony to Postmodernist Metafiction written by Christian Quendler and published by Peter Lang Pub Incorporated. This book was released on 2001 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study represents a comparison between two radical gestures of literary self-reflexivity: romantic irony and postmodernist metafiction. It examines the impact of early German romantic theory and its central concept of irony on German and English romantic narrative fiction and relates the same to postmodernist self-reflexive novels, including its British and American variants. A primary objective of this comparison is to account for the radical skepticism that postmodernist metafiction voices with respect to the paramount philosophical question of truth and reality. The immanent tension between an absolute idealistic and a radically skeptic position which romantic irony articulates and enacts is conceived of as an important and instructive link to the understanding of postmodernism.
Download or read book Writing After War written by John Limon and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This treatise develops a theory of the relationship of war in general to literature in general, to make sense of American literary history in particular. "The Iliad", argues the author, inaugurates literary history on the failure of war to be formally beautiful.
Download or read book The New Romanticism written by Eberhard Alsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Romanticism is an overview of the romantic trend taken up by American novelists in the twentieth-century. Includes three classic essays by Saul bellow, Thomas Pyncheon, and Toni Morrison.
Download or read book From Modernism to Postmodernism written by Gerhard Hoffmann and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 750 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This systemic study discusses in its historical, cultural and aesthetic context the postmodern American novel between the years of 1960 and 1980. A general overview of the various definitions of postmodernism in philosophy, cultural theory and aesthetics provides the framework for the inquiry into more specific problems, such as: the broadening of aesthetics, the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, the transformation of the artistic tradition, the interdependence between modernism and postmodernism, and the change in the aesthetics of fiction. Other topics addressed here include: situationalism, montage, the ordinary and the fantastic, the subject and the character, the imagination, comic modes, and the future of the postmodern strategies. The authors whose fiction is treated in some detail under the various aspects thematized are John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Raymond Federman, William Gaddis, John Hawkes, Jerzy Kosinski, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Ronald Sukenick, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Download or read book Neo Romanticism American Postmodernism written by Gargi Bhattacharya and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-19 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the emotions of Romantic age in post modern techniques like open-ended works. Readers' responses are prioritized over the writers'; artifact. An individual is created by his/her environment and must adhere to certain social norms. This necessitates the creation of a 'persona' where the real self remains unexplored. Ashbery and other contemporary poets like Charles Bernstein & John Fitzgerald unravel the multiple layers of the mind (conscious, subconscious & the unconscious) to manifest the hidden feelings and emotions. Describing the real self is challenging if not impossible, the poets often imply that they want to describe something but is thwarted in the process. Words, socially accepted and understood are inadequate to describe the feelings in the deep recesses of the mind. The quoted texts from the works of the contemporary American poets tell about the complex ways in which our mind functions. The second chapter narrates how Ashbery combines the heart of a Romantic with the mind of a postmodernist. Many poems of Ashbery echo the essence of Romantics like Wordsworth or Shelley. The opening lines of Ashbery's poem 'Aclove, ' in Planisphere (2009): "Is it possible that spring could be/ once more approaching?" echoes at Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind, ' where the poet apprehends the arrival of spring: "if winter comes, can spring be far behind?" The third chapter of the book ruminates on the essential similarities between 'action painting' and contemporary poetry. Abstract expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock often present works of art which allows complete freedom to the artist and are open to the multiple interpretations of the viewers. An attempt is made to capture the process of creating an art work. Most of the postmodern works of art focus on 'how' it is created instead of a tidy final product. The process of creation is one of the important themes in Ashbery's award winning work, 'Self -portrait in a Convex Mirror.' The thought process including the distractions are manifest in the poem. The fourth chapter discusses the language movement and the writings of Charles Bernstein with other contemporaries. Systematic derangement of language like abolition of prepositions or composing an entire piece of writing comprising solely of prepositional phrases, rewriting any other work, adding gerund to every line are some of the experiments done by contemporary Language Poets. They capture the thoughts in their nascent states and alter the forms of the moment perceived. The book examines the process of experimentation and new techniques of writing as well. The aim is to draw the readers' attention to the contemporary developments in American literature. This will definitely boost the inquisitiveness of the readers who have a penchant to explore the process of creation.
Download or read book Flights from Realism written by Marguerite Alexander and published by Hodder Arnold. This book was released on 1990 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the questions addressed by the study are: Should fiction console (popular fiction suggests that readers want consolation, yet few postmodernist writers seem to be offering it)? Is the postmodernist period qualitatively different from earlier periods? Is postmodernism decadent? In seeking evidence on these matters, Marguerite Alexander considers the work of a number of novelists including Faulkner, Beckett, Lowry, Durrell, Golding, Nabokov, Pynchon, Fowles, Lessing, Murdoch, Vonnegutand Doctorow.
Download or read book Romancing the Postmodern written by Diane Elam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By exposing the theory of romance to the romance of theory, Diane Elam explores literature’s most uncertain, least easily definable and most tenacious genre, assessing its implications for both feminism and the understanding of history. Arguing for a parallel between postmodernism’s divided relation to modernism and romance’s difficult stance towards realism, Romancing the Postmodern, first published in 1992, not only highlights how postmodernism questions our assumptions about historical time, it also reintroduces the figure of woman to the theory of both history and literature.
Download or read book The Form of American Romance written by Edgar Dryden and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1988. Edgar Dryden challenges recent criticism that has tended to discredit—or at least devalue—the importance of "romance" as a thematic and generic category of American fiction. In The Form of American Romance, he examines its evolution and meaning through readings of five exemplary texts: Hawthorne's Marble Faun, Melville's Pierre, James's Portrait of a Lady, Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, and Barth's Letters. Each of these novels treats the problems of reading and writing in a self-referential way that reflects on the questions they dramatize, and Dryden has chosen each with the others in mind. Taken together, they chart a line of development with representative examples of what literary history calls romanticism, realism, modernism, and postmodernism, and thus they suggest a certain story about the continuity of the American novel.
Download or read book Philip Roth s Postmodern American Romance written by Jane Statlander and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2011 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central thesis of this book is that Philip Roth's work is most accurately viewed as postmodernist American Historical Romance, rather than marginalized as Jewish-American. Four works are analyzed in relation to this thesis and to the specific idea that Roth's contribution is entirely within mainstream American literature and culture. Emphasizing the importance and influence of Hebrew Scripture, the author demonstrates that, paradoxically, Roth's Jewishness locates him squarely within the canon of (a Hebraic) America and its letters.
