The "image-event" in the early post-9/11 novel : literary representations of terror after September 11, 2001 / Ewa Kowal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kowal, Ewa.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Terrorism in literature.

Literature, Modern--21st century--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001--Influence.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001, in literature.

Qaida (Organization).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (150 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Krakow : Jagiellonian University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How can literature respond to a monumental event, unprecedented historically, politically and culturally, whose memory will forever be inseparable from its mass media coverage? How can writers represent what Jean Baudrillard called an "image-event"? In particular, what form can they use to convey the unspeakable - that was at the same time broadcast live across the globe? These questions are central to Ewa Kowal's comparative study of thirteen early post-9/11 novels. Written in four different Western countries between 2003 and 2007, during the now historical time of George W. Bush's "war on terror," the selected works provide the earliest literary reactions to the September 11,2001 terrorist attacks and/or their aftermath. Kowal examines them in a wider cultural context, focusing especially on audio-visual media, motifs of childhood and magical thinking as well as the destabilised division into reality and fiction. Offering an original reading of the whole body of work, the author places each analysed book on a scale according to its closeness to a terrorist attack, revealing a correspondence between the distance from the tragedy, the levels of danger and risk taken and the degree of formal (un)conventionality.

Contents:

CONTENTS; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS; FOREWORD: WORD ON TERROR; INTRODUCTION: THE IMAGE(-EVENT); CHAPTER I: (AUDIO-)VISUAL MEDIA IN THE POST-9/11 NOVEL; I.1. Technology; I.2. The Pattern; I.3. Media in the post-9/11 novel; I.4. "Bigger, brighter, life's so short"- inflammable art in the post-9/11 novel; CHAPTER II: FORM; CHAPTER III: MOTIFS OF CHILDHOOD AND MAGICAL THINKING IN THE POST-9/11 NOVEL; III.1. The "proto-child"; III.2. The figure of the "child"; III.3. Magical thinking (1); III.4. Motifs of childhood and magical thinking in the post-9/11 novel

III.5. The post-9/11 novel in the Language ClassroomIII.6. Magical thinking (2): Magic - "the most childish of skills"; CONCLUSION; BIBLIOGRAPHY

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 31 May 2016).

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

83-233-8491-6

OCLC:

794664110