American Biographical Novel

AvMichael Lackey

Häftad, Engelska, 2016

485 kr

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Beskrivning

Before the 1970s, there were only a few acclaimed biographical novels. But starting in the 1980s, there was a veritable explosion of this genre of fiction, leading to the publication of spectacular biographical novels about figures as varied as Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, and Marilyn Monroe, just to mention a notable few. This publication frenzy culminated in 1999 when two biographical novels (Michael Cunningham's The Hours and Russell Banks' Cloudsplitter) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and Cunningham's novel won the award. In The American Biographical Novel, Michael Lackey charts the shifts in intellectual history that made the biographical novel acceptable to the literary establishment and popular with the general reading public. More specifically, Lackey clarifies the origin and evolution of this genre of fiction, specifies the kind of 'truth' it communicates, provides a framework for identifying how this genre uniquely engages the political, and demonstrates how it gives readers new access to history.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2016-04-07
Mått:138 x 214 x 18 mm
Vikt:380 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:288
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:9781628926330

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Mer om författaren

Michael Lackey is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, USA. He is the author of The Modernist God State: A Literary Study of the Nazis’ Christian Reich (2012) and African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Faith, which won the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title in 2008, and editor of The Haverford Discussions: A Black Integrationist Manifesto for Racial Justice (2013) and Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists (2014).

Recensioner i media

Well worth reading for its careful scholarship and its insights into both a literary genre and a select group of novels that are often overlooked. ... Lackey's analysis is especially illuminating in two areas: the extent to which biographical novels reveal the complexities of German fascism and of America's racial history. ... I attribute the soundness of these interpretations to Lackey's remarkable command of scholarship: not just of literary criticism, but of German intellectual history and the many cultural debates about race in America. More effectively than any recent scholar I can remember, Lackey shows how audiences were seduced by Hitler's Mein Kampf (a fact which always amazes anyone who has read the book in the aftermath of World War II). ... The American Biographical Novel deserves praise for its close, scholarly, and thoughtful readings of its key texts.

Innehållsförteckning

Chapter One: The Rise and Legitimization of the American Biographical NovelChapter Two: The Fictional Truth of the Biographical Novel: The Case of Ludwig WittgensteinChapter Three: Surrealism, Historical Representation, and the Biographical NovelChapter Four: Zora Neale Hurston and the Art of Political Critique in the Biblical Biographical Novel Chapter Five: Dual Temporal Truths in the Biographical novelChapter Six: The Biographical Novel: A Misappropriated Life or a Truthful Fiction?BibliographyIndex