Buch, Englisch, 148 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 360 g
Reihe: ISSN
Five Contemporary American Case Studies
Buch, Englisch, 148 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 360 g
Reihe: ISSN
ISBN: 978-3-11-115508-1
Verlag: De Gruyter
The study intervenes in a field hitherto dominated by formal and historical analyses of the literary letter. Across the five case studies, the method of reading epistolarity as a motif is applied to a selection of American novels published after 1990: Nick Bantock’s series (1991-2016), Gordon Lish’s (1996), Mark Dunn’s (2001), Marilynne Robinson’s (2004), and Louise Erdrich’s (2017). The texts encompass considerable formal and thematic variations: Bantock seeks a return to the literary letter; Lish and Dunn test the limitations of letters for conveying individual experience to a distant other; Robinson and Erdrich envision epistolarity as an address to a future. Exploring the employment of epistolarity as a motif, the study offers an interpretation of the messages these fictions extend for readers in a post-letter world. Communication technologies and practices may change, but epistolarity as a motif - a reprise of a scene of encounter that depends on keeping a distance between addresser and addressee – remains a deeply compelling site of inquiry in twenty-first-century literature.
Zielgruppe
Scholars and students of literary, epistolary and media studies,
