Franzetti Epistolarity in a Post-Letter World

Five Contemporary American Case Studies
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-3-11-115838-9
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 83, 159 Seiten

Reihe: Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book SeriesISSN

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,

Autoren/Hrsg.

Franzetti, Sindija

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Sindija Franzetti, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Schweden.

Sindija Franzetti, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.