Revolution : the event in postwar fiction / Matthew Wilkens.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilkens, Matthew, 1974- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

x, 161 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Socially, politically, and artistically, the 1950s make up an odd interlude between the first half of the twentieth century-still tied to the problems and orders of the Victorian era and Gilded Age-and the pervasive transformations of the later sixties. In Revolution, Matthew Wilkens argues that postwar fiction functions as a fascinating model of revolutionary change. Uniting literary criticism, cultural analysis, political theory, and science studies, Revolution reimagines the years after World War II as at once distinct from the decades surrounding them and part of a larger-scale series of rare, revolutionary moments stretching across centuries. Focusing on the odd mix of allegory, encyclopedism, and failure that characterizes fifties fiction, Wilkens examines a range of literature written during similar times of crisis, in the process engaging theoretical perspectives from Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson to Bruno Latour and Alain Badiou alongside readings of major novels by Ralph Ellison, William Gaddis, Doris Lessing, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon, and others.

Contents:

Introduction

The structure of literary revolutions

Allegory

Event

The encyclopedia as object and metaphor

Failure and novelty in postwar fiction

Allegory, encyclopedism, and postwar america

Ellison's impure manifesto

Integration and disorder in The golden notebook.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [147]-156) and index.

ISBN:

9781421420875

1421420872

OCLC:

946031625