A Modern Fiction Studies Book – serie

The 1993 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Toni Morrison is well established as one of the leading voices in American letters. Even so, her novels are often read narrowly rather than expansively, read as literary artifacts rather than as dynamic cultural texts. Without ignoring the literary and artistic achievements of Morrison's writing, Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches calls attention to the cultural and political dimensions of her work. Drawing on a diverse range of approaches and theories-from W. E. B. DuBois to deconstruction and postmodernism, from black feminist criticism to reader response-these essays investigate such timely issues as debates about canonization, about race and gender divisions in America, about the founding assumptions of African American identity. Contributors: Barbara T. Christian, Marianne DeKoven, Dwight A. McBride, Patricia McKee, Richard C. Moreland, Toni Morrison, Rafael Perez-Torres, Nancy J. Peterson, James Phelan, Eusebio L. Rodrigues, Judylyn S. Ryan, Caroline M. Woidat "These essays exemplify the kinds of issues being addressed in the nineties by scholars of Morrison and by the profession more broadly.The topics of the individual essays vary, but read together, they offer valuable insights into why Morrison has become a much celebrated, widely taught author."-from the Introduction

Gothic and Modernism establishes and interprets the significant presence and the transformations of the Gothic tradition at the dark heart of writing during the long twentieth century. Artfully introduced and collected by John Paul Riquelme, the essays-nine previously published in Modern Fiction Studies-reveal challenges to both realism and to optimistic Enlightenment attitudes in the narratives and the styles of writers ranging from Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf to Samuel Beckett, Octavia Butler, and Bret Easton Ellis. In examining nineteenth-century works and popular dark writing of the twentieth century, the contributors elucidate literary modernism's relationship to nineteenth-century Gothic traditions, effectively extending the chronological and conceptual boundaries of the former and challenging the propriety of the barrier between high and popular forms of literature. Through compelling readings of a range of modern works, they reveal the aestheticizing of the Gothic, its parodic, culturally critical tendencies, its relation to language, literary form, and time, and its response to technological threats and promises.From canonical modernism to more popular forms, such as detective fiction, science fiction, and pornohorror, this wide-ranging and accessibly written collection offers an overview of Gothic writing's persistent influence on modern works. Contributors: Penny Fielding, University of Edinburgh; Graham Fraser, Mount Saint Vincent University; Theodora Goss, Boston University; Ruth Helyer, University of Teesside; Susan Kollin, Montana State University; Patrick R. O'Malley, Georgetown University; John Paul Riquelme, Boston University; Charles J. Rzepka; Boston University; Paul K. Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania; Joseph Valente, University of Illinois

As the most canonical woman writer of modern English literature, Virginia Woolf has become central to our conceptions of literature, modernist theory, the arts, feminism, and social analysis. The interdisciplinary examinations in this anthology explore Woolf's major novels, her key essays, and the literary tropes that unify her writings. The essays in the first section look at Woolf's acute analyses of literary imagining: her explorations of the ways fact, vision, and language interact to create both perceived reality and its representation in fiction. In the second part, the contributors focus on Woolf's social vision, considering how groups respond to traumatic events and treating both the hazards and the comforts of community. The third section brings together seven of the most challenging accounts of Woolf's ethical and political imagination, reflecting upon her representations of other minds, in particular the minds of those who differ from her according to early twentieth-century notions of class, race, and empire. An afterword by Mark Hussey sketches possible future directions for studies of her work.This revealing collection sheds new light on one of Britain's most innovative writers. It will be a welcome addition to the library of any scholar of modernism and can easily be adapted for courses on Woolf and modern literature.

Dame Muriel Spark-the highly acclaimed Scottish writer-published over twenty novels and more than a dozen short-story collections from the late 1950s until her death in 2006. Two of her novels, The Public Image and Loitering with Intent, were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and another, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was made into an Academy Award-winning movie. David Herman here assembles an international group of scholars to contexualize and analyze Spark's works, highlighting the continuing relevance of her texts in the twenty-first century. With three new essays and a reworked introduction by the editor, this volume expands a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies dedicated to Spark and her writings. Organized thematically into three parts, the volume includes essays that consider Spark as both Scottish and world author, situate Spark in the broader contexts of postwar culture, and offer exemplary readings of specific works from various critical perspectives. A resource for students and scholars alike, this volume provides information about Spark's oeuvre while also featuring current, theoretically informed interpretations of individual texts.

Internationally recognized for its superior scholarship, Modern Fiction Studies was one of the first journals to publish articles on postcolonial studies. Since postcolonialism's inception, scholars have defined, clarified, and enriched its conceptions and theoretical development in the pages of MFS. This anthology collects the best and most important articles on postcolonial literary studies published in MFS in the past thirty years. Postcolonial Literary Studies brings together groundbreaking scholarship focusing on significant works of fiction by such writers as Chinua Achebe, J. M. Coetzee, Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and more. The essays feature ideas that helped shape the discipline from its earliest stages to the present and represent some of the finest examples of literary, theoretical, historical, and cultural criticism. With its focus on literary figures and texts, rather than solely on theory, this volume fills a significant gap in the fields of postcolonialism, global studies, and literary criticism in general.This rich collection of essays by the field's leading scholars will prove indispensable to instructors and students across a broad spectrum of humanistic studies. It not only highlights the development and transformation of postcolonial literary study but also, by mapping out new directions of study, considers its continual significance and expansion.

Paris has always fascinated and welcomed writers. Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, writers of American, Caribbean, and African descent were no exception. Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic considers the travels made to Paris-whether literally or imaginatively-by black writers. These collected essays explore the transatlantic circulation of ideas, texts, and objects to which such travels to Paris contributed. Editors Jeremy Braddock and Jonathan P. Eburne expand upon an acclaimed special issue of the journal Modern Fiction Studies with four new essays and a revised introduction. Beginning with W. E. B. Du Bois's trip to Paris in 1900 and ending with the contemporary state of diasporic letters in the French capital, this collection embraces theoretical close readings, materialist intellectual studies of networks, comparative essays, and writings at the intersection of literary and visual studies. Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic is unique both in its focus on literary fiction as a formal and sociological category and in the range of examples it brings to bear on the question of Paris as an imaginary capital of diasporic consciousness.

Narrating 9/11 challenges the notion that Americans have overcome the national trauma of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The volume responds to issues of war, surveillance, and the expanding security state, including the Bush Administration's policies on preemptive war, extraordinary rendition, torture abroad, and the suspension of privacy rights and civil liberties at home. Building on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek, and Donald Pease, the contributors focus on the ways in which post-9/11 narratives help make visible the fantasies that attempt to justify the ongoing state of exception and American exceptionalism. Narrating 9/11 examines a variety of contemporary narratives as they relate to the cultural construction of the neoliberal nation-state, a role that mediates the possibilities of ethnic and religious identity as well as the ability to imagine terrorism.Touching on some of the mainstays of 9/11 fiction, including Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and John Updike's Terrorist, the book expands this particular canon by considering the work of such writers as Jess Walter, William Gibson, Lauren Groff, Ken Kalfus, Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, John le Carre, Laila Halaby, Michael Chabon, and Jarett Kobek. Narrating 9/11 pushes beyond a critical focus on domestic realism, offering chapters that examine speculative and genre fiction, postmodernism, climate change, and the evolving security state, as well as the television series Lost and the film Paradise Now.

As the most canonical woman writer of modern English literature, Virginia Woolf has become central to our conceptions of literature, modernist theory, the arts, feminism, and social analysis. The interdisciplinary examinations in this anthology explore Woolf's major novels, her key essays, and the literary tropes that unify her writings. The essays in the first section look at Woolf's acute analyses of literary imagining: her explorations of the ways fact, vision, and language interact to create both perceived reality and its representation in fiction. In the second part, the contributors focus on Woolf's social vision, considering how groups respond to traumatic events and treating both the hazards and the comforts of community. The third section brings together seven of the most challenging accounts of Woolf's ethical and political imagination, reflecting upon her representations of other minds, in particular the minds of those who differ from her according to early twentieth-century notions of class, race, and empire. An afterword by Mark Hussey sketches possible future directions for studies of her work.This revealing collection sheds new light on one of Britain's most innovative writers. It will be a welcome addition to the library of any scholar of modernism and can easily be adapted for courses on Woolf and modern literature.

Dame Muriel Spark-the highly acclaimed Scottish writer-published over twenty novels and more than a dozen short-story collections from the late 1950s until her death in 2006. Two of her novels, The Public Image and Loitering with Intent, were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and another, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was made into an Academy Award-winning movie. David Herman here assembles an international group of scholars to contexualize and analyze Spark's works, highlighting the continuing relevance of her texts in the twenty-first century. With three new essays and a reworked introduction by the editor, this volume expands a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies dedicated to Spark and her writings. Organized thematically into three parts, the volume includes essays that consider Spark as both Scottish and world author, situate Spark in the broader contexts of postwar culture, and offer exemplary readings of specific works from various critical perspectives. A resource for students and scholars alike, this volume provides information about Spark's oeuvre while also featuring current, theoretically informed interpretations of individual texts.

Drawn from the pages of Modern Fiction Studies-with its distinguished tradition of publishing scholarship on William Faulkner-this landmark volume collects nineteen seminal essays that focus on Faulkner's most popular fiction, reflecting the enduring relevance of his canon. The essays are grouped thematically into four categories-Myth and Religion; Temporality, History, and Trauma; Gender and Race: Affect, the Body, and Identity; and Modernity and Modernist Technique. For ease of use in the classroom, MFS editor John N. Duvall has also included two appendixes. The first is an alternative table of contents that arranges the critiques by major novels. The second appendix lists all of the essays chronologically, and provides a full list of all seventy-three Faulkner essays published by MFSover the years. Duvall's introduction explains the critical role of MFS in the evolution of Faulkner studies. His organization of the works and his supplementary material provide both students and scholars with a concise overview of Faulkner studies from its New Critical beginnings through its current engagements with theory and history.

Drawn from the pages of Modern Fiction Studies-with its distinguished tradition of publishing scholarship on William Faulkner-this landmark volume collects nineteen seminal essays that focus on Faulkner's most popular fiction, reflecting the enduring relevance of his canon. The essays are grouped thematically into four categories-Myth and Religion; Temporality, History, and Trauma; Gender and Race: Affect, the Body, and Identity; and Modernity and Modernist Technique. For ease of use in the classroom, MFS editor John N. Duvall has also included two appendixes. The first is an alternative table of contents that arranges the critiques by major novels. The second appendix lists all of the essays chronologically, and provides a full list of all seventy-three Faulkner essays published by MFSover the years. Duvall's introduction explains the critical role of MFS in the evolution of Faulkner studies. His organization of the works and his supplementary material provide both students and scholars with a concise overview of Faulkner studies from its New Critical beginnings through its current engagements with theory and history.