Barry Hannah, postmodern romantic / Ruth D. Weston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weston, Ruth D., 1934-

Series:

Southern literary studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hannah, Barry--Criticism and interpretation.

Hannah, Barry.

Romanticism--Southern States--History--20th century.

Romanticism.

Postmodernism (Literature)--Southern States.

Postmodernism (Literature).

History.

Criticism and interpretation.

Mississippi--In literature.

Mississippi.

Southern States.

Physical Description:

xii, 147 pages ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Barry Hannah

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [1998]

Summary:

Mississippi writer Barry Hannah has published, over twenty-five years, eleven works of fiction of such complexity, verve, and linguistic virtuosity that the time for extensive critical attention and celebration has unquestionably arrived. Ruth Weston, an appreciative reader and a stellar scholar, shares her understanding and explications of this important southern storyteller in a thematic tour of his complete works.

From Geronimo Rex to Captain Maximus to Bats Out of Hell to High Lonesome -- Hannah's novels and stories, Weston shows, bountifully repay the effort required of the reader. And they do require some effort, not only because of their fragmented, postmodern narrative style but also because of the hard truths they contain about the conditions of present-day life. And yet, Hannah is by temperament a romantic writer, nostalgic and possessed of a great sadness imbued with an irrational optimism. Weston identifies and explores four major aspects of his fiction in light of this romantic/postmodern dichotomy: the theme of adolescent initiation; the theme of search for self; an interest in characters with distorted visions and lives; and an intertextual relation to a panorama of literary genres and styles. She locates the literary manner of Hannah somewhere between that of a scatological jester and an eloquently raving Lear. More optimistic than the great modernists, less cynical than most metafictionists, he creates an unstable arena of textual play that coheres in surprising ways.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [133]-139) and index.

ISBN:

0807122904

OCLC:

39130472