Rewriting

Christian Moraru is Assistant Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

"Moraru argues forcibly for inclusion of feminist, African American, and postcolonial points of view in postmodern criticism." — CHOICE"In studying postmodern rewrites, Moraru's goal is to answer those critics on the Left and Right who see postmodern fiction as mere recycling in our age of cloning … Rewriting is a pleasure to read, as Moraru's writing is accessible and nimble." — American Literature"Rewriting breaks new ground and resolves a debate central to the understanding of contemporary fiction." — Jerome Klinkowitz, author of Literary Disruptions: The Making of a Post-Contemporary American Fiction"The book's triple subjects—postmodernism, reading, and intertextuality—are each extremely significant, utterly current, and vigorously debated. The range of this book is exemplary: it reexamines earlier central texts and authors as well as a number of works from the nineties. It will stay fresh for many years." — Brian Richardson, author of Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative

• PrefaceAcknowledgments PART I. Rewriting and Postmodernism 1. Rewriting and Late Twentieth-Century Narrative Cultural Mythology and the Return of NarrativeClassical "Underwriting" to Contemporary "Counterwriting"A Few Distinctions...And a Definition: Focus and Terminology 2. Renarrativization, Revision, Critique Intensities and ExtensitiesModus Scribendi: Discourse and Intertextual PoliticsModus Legendi: An Approach to Rewriting PART II. Rewriting and the National Narrative 1. Romanticism Reincorporated: E.L. Doctorow and the (Re)Production of America Literary Rags, Historical TattersAntinostalgic deja-lu: Performance and MasqueradeBetween the (Re)Assembly LinesTranscendent Surplus, Capital ResurrectionsThe Immigrating Scripts amd the Staging of America 2. Cold War Fairy Tales: Robert Coover's Social Romance The "Discourse of America"Alger's "Wrong Turn": Coover's Personas and Algeresque ImpersonationsThe Public Burning of the Public Sphere 3. Trascendentalist Rewrites: Paul Auster and the "National Machine" The Social "Other": Tranpositions and DuplicationsThe Textual Double: (Re)Visiting PoelandGhost(s)WritingManhattan Transfers: From Poe to Walden PondUnnamable Thoreau PART III. Rewriting Race: Models of "Cross-Fertilization" in African American Postmodernism Repetition, Reinscription, and Blck Postmodernism 1. Outwriting: Ishmael Reed's Critical Reappropriations Master of the Crossroads: Signifyin(g), RewritingImproper Appropriations: "Stolentelling" and the Deromancing of RacePurloining PoeDancing to the TypewriterNecromantic Rewriting: Bonds of Desire 2. Middle Passages: "(Re)Writing Furiously" "Rewording": Blackness and Literary AgonRutherford, the Crivener: Rewriting as Manumission 3. Hip Hop Rewriting: Toward a "Postliberated" Aesthetic Black Glasnost and "Cross-Pollinating" ReassemblagesThe Pleasure of the HypertextCo-Authoring PART IV. Writing Through: Rewriting, Plagiarism, Apocrypha The Metastases of Originality 1. Avant-Pop Graftings: Mark Leyner's Outrageous Body of Work (Re)Working Out"My Books and My Body": Inset, Insert, Textual SurgeryThrice-Told Tales: Hawthorne, Inc."Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown": A "Heinous Revision"Mutant Narratives: A Typology 2. "Re-Lettering" Hawthorne: Kathy Acker and recriture feminine Renaming, Language, PiracyHester Prynne in High School: Impurifying Puritanism 3. Hester Prynne in India: Bharati Mukjerjee's Postcolonial Letter(s) Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, RewritingApocryphal (Hi)Stories Epilogue. Rewriting PostmodernismNotesBibliographyIndex