The Dialectic of Self and Story: Reading and Storytelling in Contemporary American Fiction

by Robert Durante

Overview

Informed by selected postmodern theories and cultural criticism, this study argues that while American fiction of the 1980s and 1990s bears the outward signs of a return to realism, it also evidences recurring themes of postmodernism, such as alienation, social disintegration, personal despair, historical dislocation, and authorial self-reflexiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815337591
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/29/2001
Series:	Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
Pages:	126
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Table of Contents: I. Introduction: The Fiction in the Story and the Story in the Fiction II. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial as Postmodern Text III. Toward Transcendence: Reading and Writing in Raymond Carver's Fiction IV. Reading the Landscape: Richard Ford's New Realism V. Beyond Ethnicity: Realism and Postmodernism in Louise Eldrich's Novels VI. Reading and Storytelling in Selected Fiction of the Vietnam War VII. Epilogue: An Extended Map Reading of Contemporary American Fiction VIII. Works Cited

Editorial Reviews

"Reading Contemporary Picturbooks is happily more eclectic than a primer. Part social scientist and part literary critic, Lewis approaches his subject through a combination of taxonomical evaluation and meditative analysis, producing an even-handed evaluation of Emil Award-winning British picture books published during the last twenty years. Philip."

From the Publisher