Intimacy and Identity in the Postmodern Novel PDF Download

Author: Emilija Dimitrijevic
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039110315
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

View

Book Description
This book focuses on the themes of intimacy and identity in the contemporary novel and, in particular, in the novels of A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. Not only do the specificity of the contemporary social context and a growing awareness of the relational nature of the concepts of intimacy and identity set these novels apart from earlier writing that take these issues more for granted. Their very concern with the themes of intimacy and identity also sets them apart from much postmodernist, or mannerist, writing that chooses to cold-shoulder these arguments. The study draws on work by contemporary social theorists and philosophers, and aims to examine issues which, although central to the writing of these authors, have been neglected or treated superficially in literary criticism. Finally, it looks into the ways in which the new approaches to the question of intimacy and identity relate and contribute to contemporary debates on the postmodern novel.

Author: Ernest L. Gibson (III)
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496217918
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287

View

Book Description
2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Salvific Manhood foregrounds the radical power of male intimacy and vulnerability in surveying each of James Baldwin's six novels. Asserting that manhood and masculinity hold the potential for both tragedy and salvation, Ernest L. Gibson III highlights the complex and difficult emotional choices Baldwin's men must make within their varied lives, relationships, and experiences. In Salvific Manhood, Gibson offers a new and compelling way to understand the hidden connections between Baldwin's novels. Thematically daring and theoretically provocative, he presents a queering of salvation, a nuanced approach that views redemption through the lenses of gender and sexuality. Exploring how fraternal crises develop out of sociopolitical forces and conditions, Salvific Manhood theorizes a spatiality of manhood, where spaces in between men are erased through expressions of intimacy and love. Positioned at the intersections of literary criticism, queer studies, and male studies, Gibson deconstructs Baldwin's wrestling with familial love, American identity, suicide, art, incarceration, and memory by magnifying the potent idea of salvific manhood. Ultimately, Salvific Manhood calls for an alternate reading of Baldwin's novels, introducing new theories for understanding the intricacies of African American manhood and American identity, all within a space where the presence of tragedy can give way to the possibility of salvation.​

Author: Robert G. Dunn
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816630738
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

View

Book Description
Significant to Dunn's critique of poststructuralist and postmodern theories is his application of George Herbert Mead as a means of theorizing identity and difference. The focus on postmodernity, rather than postmodernism grounds his analysis of identity and difference both materially and socially.

Author: Peter Beilharz
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526132176
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 249

View

Book Description
Zygmunt Bauman was one of the most important social theorists of recent decades. He did major work on the Holocaust, the postmodern and much else, up to fifty-eight books in English on almost as many topics. In this book, Australian sociologist Peter Beilharz, Bauman’s collaborator for thirty years, recounts the details of their relationship, simultaneously charting the changes that have occurred in academic life from the 1980s to today. Friendship was one of the bonds that made Bauman and Beilharz’s intellectual collaboration possible. Though the two were worlds apart in terms of biography and place, their work together was defined by a certain kind of intimacy. Separated by a generation, they collaborated for a generation together. This book follows their story in touching detail while puzzling over Bauman’s rich yet contested legacy.

Author: Menna van Praag
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101606363
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

View

Book Description
A magical debut about an enchanted house that offers refuge to women in their time of need Distraught that her academic career has stalled, Alba is walking through her hometown of Cambridge, England, when she finds herself in front of a house she’s never seen before, 11 Hope Street. A beautiful older woman named Peggy greets her and invites her to stay, on the house’s usual conditions: she has ninety-nine nights to turn her life around. With nothing left to lose, Alba takes a chance and moves in. She soon discovers that this is no ordinary house. Past residents have included Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker, who, after receiving the assistance they needed, hung around to help newcomers—literally, in talking portraits on the wall. As she escapes into this new world, Alba begins a journey that will heal her wounds—and maybe even save her life. Filled with a colorful and unforgettable cast of literary figures, The House at the End of Hope Street is a charming, whimsical novel of hope and feminine wisdom that is sure to appeal to fans of Jasper Fforde and especially Sarah Addison Allen.

Author: Claire Allen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030488861
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 279

View

Book Description
This book analyses London fiction at the millennium, reading it in relation to an exploration of a theoretical positioning beyond the postmodern. It explores how a selection of novels can be considered as “second-wave” or “post-postmodern” in light of their borrowing more from mainstream and classical genres as opposed to formally experimental avant-garde techniques. It considers how writers utilise the cultural capital of London in a process of relocating marginalized, subjugated or under-represented voices. The millennium provides an apt symbolic opportunity to reflect on British fiction and to consider the direction in which contemporary authors are moving. As such, key novels by Martin Amis, Bella Bathurst, Bernardine Evaristo, Mark Haddon, Nick Hornby, Hanif Kureishi, Andrea Levy, Gautam Malkani, Timothy Mo, Will Self, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, Rupert Thomson, and Sarah Waters are used to explore writing beyond the postmodern. ‘In this significant and welcome contribution to the field, Allen provides us with a sophisticated, detailed, and rigorous study of the move in contemporary fiction beyond postmodernism as exemplified by London fiction.’ —Nick Hubble, Brunel University London, UK

Author: Diane P. Freedman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822312925
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
For a long time now, readers and scholars have strained against the limits of traditional literary criticism, whose precepts--above all, "objectivity"--seem to have so little to do with the highly personal and deeply felt experience of literature. The Intimate Critique marks a movement away from this tradition. With their rich spectrum of personal and passionate voices, these essays challenge and ultimately breach the boundaries between criticism and narrative, experience and expression, literature and life. Grounded in feminism and connected to the race, class, and gender paradigms in cultural studies, the twenty-six contributors to this volume--including Jane Tompkins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Shirley Nelson Garner, and Shirley Goek-Lin Lim--respond in new, refreshing ways to literary subjects ranging from Homer to Freud, Middlemarch to The Woman Warrior, Shiva Naipaul to Frederick Douglass. Revealing the beliefs and formative life experiences that inform their essays, these writers characteristically recount the process by which their opinions took shape--a process as conducive to self-discovery as it is to critical insight. The result--which has been referred to as "personal writing," "experimental critical writing," or "intellectual autobiography"--maps a dramatic change in the direction of literary criticism. Contributors. Julia Balen, Dana Beckelman, Ellen Brown, Sandra M. Brown, Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton, Suzanne Bunkers, Peter Carlton, Brenda Daly, Victoria Ekanger, Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, Shirley Nelson Garner, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Melody Graulich, Gail Griffin, Dolan Hubbard, Kendall, Susan Koppelman, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Linda Robertson, Carol Taylor, Jane Tompkins, Cheryl Torsney, Trace Yamamoto, Frances Murphy Zauhar

Author: Laura E. Tanner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253115973
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 188

View

Book Description
"Tanner deals with the central question of all narrative texts: how the reader is manipulated into empathy or distance by the text.... This study... is the sort that needs to be redone in every classroom and by every mature reader.... Tanner offers provocative and useful discussions of rape and torture... " -- Choice "This thoughtful and disturbing book raises serious questions about 'the consequences... of reading representations of rape and torture.' " -- American Literature "In this incisive exploration of twentieth-century novels, art, and ads, Laura Tanner explains the mechanisms by which reader and viewer are implicated in violence. Equally effective as a challenge to textual assault is the grace and gentleness of Tanner's own prose. Intimate Violence signals the emergence of an astute and humane critical voice." -- Wendy Steiner Through an examination of such notorious works as The White Hotel and American Psycho, Laura Tanner leads us in a disturbing exploration of the reader's complicity with fictional depictions of intimate violence.

Author: Milan Kundera
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063290707
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178

View

Book Description
"Kundera, master of the twosome, finds erotic and existential threads everywhere in daily behavior. Like his previous books, Identity is a cluster of jeweled observations. . . . But Identity has a special charm: suspense. . . . [It] gets us turning the pages in excitement and alarm, and Kundera's wit keeps us turning them to the very end." — San Francisco Chronicle In a narrative as intense as it is brief, a moment of confusion sets in motion a complex chain of events which forces the reader to cross and recross the divide between fantasy and reality. Sometimes—perhaps only for an instant—we fail to recognize a companion; for a moment their identity ceases to exist, and thus we come to doubt our own. The effect is at its most acute in a couple, where our existence is given meaning by our perception of a lover, and theirs of us. With his astonishing skill at building on and out from the significant moment, Milan Kundera has placed such a situation and the resulting wave of panic at the core of this novel. Hailed as a "a fervent and compelling romance, a moving fable about the anxieties of love and separateness" (Baltimore Sun), it is not to be missed.

Author: Brian Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113482565X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332

View

Book Description
Drawing on developments in critical theory and postmodernist fiction, this study makes an important contribution to the appreciation of playforms in language, texts, and cultural practices. Tracing trajectories in theories of play and game, and with particular attention to the writings of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, and Derrida, the author argues that the concept of play provides perspectives on language and communication processes useful both for analysis of literary texts and also for understanding the interactive nature of constructions of knowledge Exploring manifestations of game and play throughout the history of Western culture, from Plato to Pynchon, this study traces developments in 20th-century cultural and literary theory of ideas about play in the writings of Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Jacques Ehrmann, Bernard Suits, James Hans, Mihai Spariosu and Robert Rawdon Wilson. The author emphasizes post-structuralist developments with specific attention to deconstruction and reception theory and argues that deconstruction makes the most significant recent contribution to play theory in its application to language and to literature The work also explores the modes and effects of playforms in particular examples of postmodernist fiction. With attention to major works from Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow), John Barth (LETTERS , Robert Kroetsch (What the Crow Said ), Angela Carter (Nights at the Circus ) and Peter Carey (Illywhacker ), Edwards acknowledges and deconstructs such basic oppositions as play and seriousness, fiction and truth, difference and identity to explore the literature's cultural/political significance. Seeking to affirm the fiction's continuing social relevance, the readings presented in this book place play irresistibly at the heartland of language, meaning and culture.