Showing papers in "Contemporary Literature in 2003"
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TL;DR: Pitchford as mentioned in this paper argues for putting feminist practices of reading at the centre of a revitalized concept of postmodernism, arguing that even those images decried by some feminists as most compromised and patriarchal are problematic.
Abstract: Analyzes the work of Kathy Acker and Angela Carter and argues for putting feminist practices of reading at the centre of a revitalized concept of postmodernism. In Acker's and Carter's rereading of even those images decried by some feminists as most compromised and patriarchal Pitchford also sees a way for feminism to move beyond its internal divisions over sexuality and obscenity.
15 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between order and disorder in the works of John Hawkes, Harry Mathews, John Barth, Gilbert Sorrentino, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, and Don DeLillo is discussed in this article.
Abstract: Design and Debris discusses the relationship between order and disorder in the works of John Hawkes, Harry Mathews, John Barth, Gilbert Sorrentino, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, and Don DeLillo. In analyzing their work, Joseph Conte brings to bear a unique approach adapted from scientific thought: chaos theory. His chief concern is illuminating those works whose narrative structures locate order hidden in disorder (whose authors Conte terms "proceduralists"), and those whose structures reflect the opposite, disorder emerging from states of order (whose authors Conte calls "disruptors"). Documenting the paradigm shift from modernism, in which artists attempted to impose order on a disordered world, to postmodernism, in which the artist portrays the process of "orderly disorder," Conte shows how the shift has led to postmodern artists' embrace of science in their treatment of complex ideas. Detailing how chaos theory interpenetrates disciplines as varied as economics, politics, biology, and cognitive science, he suggests a second paradigm shift: from modernist specialization to postmodern pluralism. In such a pluralistic world, the novel is freed from the purely literary and engages in a greater degree of interactivity - between literature and science, and between author and reader. Thus, Conte concludes, contemporary literature is a literature of flux and flexibility.
14 citations
TL;DR: Dogeaters occupies a prominent position within the U.S. academy as the best known and most widely taught novel about the Philippines and has proven resonant with contemporary critics because of the various theoretical connections it suggests.
Abstract: essica Hagedorn's 1990 novel Dogeaters occupies a prominent position within the U.S. academy as the best known and most widely taught novel about the Philippines. The novel has proven resonant with contemporary critics because of the various theoretical connections it suggests. Its kaleidoscopic multiplicity of narratives, set in a former colony of the United States, as well as Hagedorn's status as a Filipino American author writing about the Philippines, has facilitated productive linkages between postcolonial theory and theories of postmodernism; American Studies and postcolonial theory; Asian American Studies and theories of transnationalism. A number of critics have
11 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a close look at the trope of trash in E. L. Doctorow's fiction is presented, where images are assembled into complex narratives that yield a Yeatsian sheen of mastery and brilliance.
Abstract: "T~ aking W. B. Yeats's cue that "refuse" and "rags" comprise the recycled raw materials of "masterful images," this essay takes a close look at the trope of trash in E. L. Doctorow's fiction. Doctorow assembles images into complex narratives that yield a Yeatsian sheen, however tarnished, of mastery and brilliance. And Yeats and Doctorow are similarly concerned about the modes of consumption that have come to constitute the economic system of the Western industrial Litera y Narrative and Information Cultu e: arbage, Waste, and Residue in th Work
TL;DR: The authors argue that "our approaches to ethnic texts often fall short of substantive critical analysis," and that "if, as scholars, and teachers, we read ethnically identified texts exclusively for their cultural content, their political message, their historicity, or whatever, we are not really treating them as literary works of art-as artistic creations" (8-9).
Abstract: n her 2001 presidential address to The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), Bonnie TuSmith argues for the importance of studying and teaching multi-ethnic literature but opens a debate about the ways in which scholars of multi-ethnic literature read and evaluate ethnic texts. She says that "our approaches to ethnic texts often fall short of substantive critical analysis," and that "if, as scholars, and teachers, we read ethnically identified texts exclusively for their cultural content, their political message, their historicity, or whatever, we are not really treating them as literary works of art-as artistic creations" (8-9). In discussions following and prompted by these remarks, it became clear that scholars of multi-ethnic literature are facing a schism in terms of critical responses to texts. While TuSmith raises the point that "we are quick to excavate and promote hitherto bypassed works from margin-
TL;DR: Wideman's 1990 novel Philadelphia Fire assesses the contemporary implications and outcomes of black activism of the 1960s and 1970s-the promises of the civil rights and the demands of the Black Power movements generally, and the example of the radical African American communal group MOVE (short for The Movement) specifically.
Abstract: ohn Edgar Wideman's 1990 novel Philadelphia Fire assesses the contemporary implications and outcomes of black activism of the 1960s and 1970s-the promises of the civil rights and the demands of the Black Power movements generally, and the example of the radical African American communal group MOVE (short for The Movement) specifically. Wideman roots his assessment of the recent past in a detour through the nation's colonial history, returning to foundational American assumptions about power and creativity, race and gender. This recourse to history allows him to ground his main concern, the fractured dyad of the black father and son, in the raced and gendered spaces created by white founders. In Philadelphia Fire, Philadelphia stands as map and metaphor for the colonial past and (post)colonial present that position black men as dispossessed sons of white fathers rather than men in their own right. But Wideman also makes Philadelphia representative of alternative notions of history that challenge deeply held national ideals of what constitutes a man in his own right. Wideman chooses William Penn's founding vision of Philadelphia to serve as epigraph to his novel:
TL;DR: The Irish poet Paul Muldoon has consistently displayed a remarkably nimble ability to write neither as an insider nor as an outsider, neither as communal advocate nor as communal antagonist as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Irish poet Paul Muldoon has consistently displayed a remarkably nimble ability to write neither as an insider nor as an outsider, neither as communal advocate nor as communal antagonist. By the mid-1980s this ability had come under increasing personal and professional pressure, as well as under the more diffuse pressure exerted by the Troubles. During these years, as he came to the decision to leave Northern Ireland, Muldoon was composing the poems that would become Meeting the British (1987).1 His first volume after his 1986 departure,
TL;DR: The work of John Edgar Wideman as mentioned in this paper has attracted much attention in the last few decades and has been widely recognized as one of the best and most successful American fiction writers of all time.
Abstract: n cosmological string theory, the "[f]our dimensions [of everyday life]-heig t, widt , depth, and timecorrespond to the spacetime of relativity theory. The remaining six dimensions are somehow crumpled up so tightly that, in effect, they vanish from view" (Peterson 140). String theory and the ten-or-eleven-dimensional universe may seem an odd route into an analysis of the work of John Edgar Wideman, but something unusual is needed to articulate the submerged metaphysics of this challenging writer. In a career now in its fourth decade, Wideman has gradually become one of the best and most ambitious American fictionists, though academic recognition in his own country lags considerably behind his accomplishment. How does one describe the kind of writer he is? His books might be the work of several people, so much do they vary. His fifteen volumes to date include Joycean modernist novels, familial-anecdotal novels that draw on oral modes, memoir-meditations on race as it affects family and sport, postmodern historical novels, and a pair of love stories. Most readers would agree that his work is "intellectual" and "challenging" in any mode, but what does the oeuvre add up to? Trying to find a logic to Wideman's output as an evolving totality, critics have not discovered a basic trajectory or sensed a coherent vision. This problem (for critics if not readers of particular books) is exacerbated by his tendency to respond to racial injustice in analytic rather than program-oriented ways, since a strong, predictable response would yield an easy label for his creations. I am going to suggest that we can find at least one form of revealing
TL;DR: In this paper, Roemer and Bacchilega make a distinct addition to the growing body of scholarship available on Angela Carter, focusing productively on Carter's revisionary fairy and folk tales.
Abstract: Cristina Bacchilega make a distinct addition to the growing body of scholarship available on Angela Carter, focusing productively on Carter's revisionary fairy and folk tales. Although the bulk of the essays attend to Carter's marvelous work in her classic volume The Bloody Chamber, several examine her use of the fairy tale in other venues, including her early picture books for children, her novels, and her later short-story collections. In addition to ten illuminating essays of literary criticism proper (five on The Bloody Chamber, including three on the title story), the collection provides a helpful introduction, an excellent bibliographic essay, and four moving pieces that recall or pay tribute to Carter through memoir, interview, and short fiction. A rich and briskly paced anthology that probes several veins of Carter's rich imagination, the volume originally appeared as a special issue of Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies; all the essays are reprinted verbatim except for an expansion of the introduction and the bibliographic essay. In the introduction, Roemer and Bacchilega assert that the \"volume has no one thesis\" (7), but within the context of a finely tuned exploration of \"Angela Carter and the Literary Mirchen\" (the 1996 elling Tales about Angela Cart r