Aggressive Fictions

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Aggressive Fictions

Kathryn Hume
Aggressive Fictions Book PDF

Author : Kathryn Hume
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2012-01-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780801462887

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Aggressive Fictions by Kathryn Hume Pdf

A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. Kathryn Hume calls such works "aggressive fiction." Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, Hume offers a commonsense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. In her reliable and sympathetic guide, Hume considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. Hume gathers "attacks" on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.

Aggressive Fictions

Kathryn Hume
Aggressive Fictions Book PDF

Author : Kathryn Hume
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2012-01-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780801462870

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Aggressive Fictions by Kathryn Hume Pdf

A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. Kathryn Hume calls such works "aggressive fiction." Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, Hume offers a commonsense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. In her reliable and sympathetic guide, Hume considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. Hume gathers "attacks" on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.

Useful Fictions

Michael Austin
Useful Fictions Book PDF

Author : Michael Austin
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2011-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780803232976

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Useful Fictions by Michael Austin Pdf

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion observed inThe White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, inUseful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After all, virtually every human culture reveres some form of storytelling. Might there be an evolutionary reason behind our species' need for stories? Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, and evolutionary aesthetics, Austin develops the concept of a "useful fiction," a simple narrative that serves an adaptive function unrelated to its factual accuracy. In his work we see how these useful fictions play a key role in neutralizing the overwhelming anxiety that humans can experience as their minds gather and process information. Rudimentary narratives constructed for this purpose, Austin suggests, provided a cognitive scaffold that might have become the basis for our well-documented love of fictional stories. Written in clear, jargon-free prose and employing abundant literary examplesfrom the Bible toOne Thousand and One Arabian NightsandDon QuixotetoNo ExitAustin's work offers a new way of understanding the relationship between fiction and evolutionary processesand, perhaps, the very origins of literature.

Queer Experimental Literature

Tyler Bradway
Queer Experimental Literature Book PDF

Author : Tyler Bradway
Publisher : Springer
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2017-05-09
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781137595430

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Queer Experimental Literature by Tyler Bradway Pdf

This volume argues that postwar writers queer the affective relations of reading through experiments with literary form. Tyler Bradway conceptualizes “bad reading” as an affective politics that stimulates queer relations of erotic and political belonging in the event of reading. These incipiently social relations press back against legal, economic, and discursive forces that reduce queerness into a mode of individuality. Each chapter traces the affective politics of bad reading against moments when queer relationality is prohibited, obstructed, or destroyed—from the pre-Stonewall literary obscenity debates, through the AIDS crisis, to the emergence of neoliberal homonormativity and the gentrification of the queer avant-garde. Bradway contests the common narrative that experimental writing is too formalist to engender a mode of social imagination. Instead, he illuminates how queer experimental literature uses form to redraw the affective and social relations that structure the heteronormative public sphere. Through close readings informed by affect theory, Queer Experimental Literature offers new perspectives on writers such as William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany, Kathy Acker, Jeanette Winterson, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Alison Bechdel, and Chuck Palahniuk. Queer Experimental Literature ultimately reveals that the recent turn to affective reading in literary studies is underwritten by a para-academic history of bad reading that offers new idioms for understanding the affective agencies of queer aesthetics.

Utopia and Terror in Contemporary American Fiction

Judie Newman
Utopia and Terror in Contemporary American Fiction Book PDF

Author : Judie Newman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2014-07-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781136774805

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Utopia and Terror in Contemporary American Fiction by Judie Newman Pdf

This book examines the quest for/failure of Utopia across a range of contemporary American/transnational fictions in relation to terror and globalization through authors such as Susan Choi, André Dubus, Dalia Sofer, and John Updike. While recent critical thinkers have reengaged with Utopia, the possibility of terror — whether state or non-state, external or homegrown — shadows Utopian imaginings. Terror and Utopia are linked in fiction through the exploration of the commodification of affect, a phenomenon of a globalized world in which feelings are managed, homogenized across cultures, exaggerated, or expunged according to a dominant model. Narrative approaches to the terrorist offer a means to investigate the ways in which fiction can resist commodification of affect, and maintain a reasoned but imaginative vision of possibilities for human community. Newman explores topics such as the first American bestseller with a Muslim protagonist, the links between writer and terrorist, the work of Iranian-Jewish Americans, and the relation of race and religion to Utopian thought.

The Metamorphoses of Myth in Fiction since 1960

Kathryn Hume
The Metamorphoses of Myth in Fiction since 1960 Book PDF

Author : Kathryn Hume
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2020-02-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781501359897

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The Metamorphoses of Myth in Fiction since 1960 by Kathryn Hume Pdf

Why do contemporary writers use myths from ancient Greece and Rome, Pharaonic Egypt, the Viking north, Africa's west coast, and Hebrew and Christian traditions? What do these stories from premodern cultures have to offer us? The Metamorphoses of Myth in Fiction since 1960 examines how myth has shaped writings by Kathy Acker, Margaret Atwood, William S. Burroughs, A. S. Byatt, Neil Gaiman, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Jeanette Winterson, and others, and contrasts such canonical texts with fantasy, speculative fiction, post-singularity fiction, pornography, horror, and graphic narratives. These artistic practices produce a feeling of meaning that doesn't need to be defined in scientific or materialist terms. Myth provides a sense of rightness, a recognition of matching a pattern, a feeling of something missing, a feeling of connection. It not only allows poetic density but also manipulates our moral judgments, or at least stimulates us to exercise them. Working across genres, populations, and critical perspectives, Kathryn Hume elicits an understanding of the current uses of mythology in fiction.

Fictional Immorality and Immoral Fiction

Garry Young
Fictional Immorality and Immoral Fiction Book PDF

Author : Garry Young
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781793639202

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Fictional Immorality and Immoral Fiction by Garry Young Pdf

It is commonplace for fictional content to depict immoral activities: the kidnapping of a politician, for example, or the elaborate theft of a national treasure, or perhaps the gruesome proclivities of a sadistic murderer. These and similar depictions can be found across a range of media, and in varying degrees of detail and realism. Fictional Immorality and Immoral Fiction examines potential conditions for transforming fictional immorality into immoral fiction, in order to establish what makes a depiction of fictional immorality and/or one’s engagement with it immoral. To achieve this aim, Garry Young analyzes fictional content, its meaning, one’s motivation for engaging with it, and the medium in which the fiction is presented (such as film, literature, theatre, video games) using philosophical inquiry. The end result is a systematic examination of fictional immorality, which contributes toward debates on the morality of depicting and engaging with fictional immorality, as well as the reach of censorship and other forms of prohibition, especially when the act depicted is of the kind that would be most egregious if carried out in reality.

Feminine Fictions

Patricia Waugh
Feminine Fictions Book PDF

Author : Patricia Waugh
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780415521819

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Feminine Fictions by Patricia Waugh Pdf

Addressing the relationship between feminist and postmodernist writing and theory through the insights of psychoanalysis and in the context of the development of modern fiction in Britain and America, Patricia Waugh attempts to uncover the reasons why women writers have been excluded from the considerations of postmodern art. The second part of the book analyses the work of six 'traditional' and six 'experimental' writers, challenging the restrictive definitions of 'realist', 'modernist', 'postmodernist' in the light of the theoretical position developed in part one. Authors covered include: Woolf (viewed as a postmodernist 'precursor' rather than a 'high' modernist), Drabble, Tyler, Plath, Brookner, Paley, Lessing, Weldon, Atwood, Walker, Spark, Russ, and Piercy.

The Editor Function

Abram Foley
The Editor Function Book PDF

Author : Abram Foley
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2021-08-31
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781452966656

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The Editor Function by Abram Foley Pdf

Offering the everyday tasks of literary editors as inspired sources of postwar literary history Michel Foucault famously theorized “the author function” in his 1969 essay “What Is an Author?” proposing that the existence of the author limits textual meaning. Abram Foley shows a similar critique at work in the labor of several postwar editors who sought to question and undo the corporate “editorial/industrial complex.” Marking an end to the powerful trope of the editor as gatekeeper, The Editor Function demonstrates how practices of editing and publishing constitute their own kinds of thought, calling on us to rethink what we read and how. The Editor Function follows avant-garde American literary editors and the publishing practices they developed to compete against the postwar corporate consolidation of the publishing industry. Foley studies editing and publishing through archival readings and small press and literary journal publishing lists as unique sites for literary inquiry. Pairing histories and analyses of well- and lesser-known figures and publishing formations, from Cid Corman’s Origin and Nathaniel Mackey’s Hambone to Dalkey Archive Press and Semiotext(e), Foley offers the first in-depth engagement with major publishing initiatives in the postwar United States. The Editor Function proposes that from the seemingly mundane tasks of these editors—routine editorial correspondence, line editing, list formation—emerge visions of new, better worlds and new textual and conceptual spaces for collective action.

Chuck Palahniuk

Francisco Collado-Rodriguez
Chuck Palahniuk Book PDF

Author : Francisco Collado-Rodriguez
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2013-08-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781441174321

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Chuck Palahniuk by Francisco Collado-Rodriguez Pdf

From trauma to postmodernism and gender theory, this guide surveys a full range of critical perspectives on three of Palahniuk's major novels, including Fight Club.

The Tribe of Pyn

David Cowart
The Tribe of Pyn Book PDF

Author : David Cowart
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2015-12-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780472052882

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The Tribe of Pyn by David Cowart Pdf

A study of generational inheritance, engagement, and cross-fertilization in the landscape of literary postmodernism

Teaching Palahniuk: The Treasures of Transgression in the Age of Trump and Beyond

Christopher Burlingame
Teaching Palahniuk The Treasures of Transgression in the Age of Trump and Beyond Book PDF

Author : Christopher Burlingame
Publisher : Vernon Press
Page : 159 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2022-05-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781648894121

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Teaching Palahniuk: The Treasures of Transgression in the Age of Trump and Beyond by Christopher Burlingame Pdf

While much has been written about Chuck Palahniuk and his body of work, next to nothing has been written about when, where and how it is necessary to teach Palahniuk. This collection will reveal that teaching Palahniuk’s work and the discursive dynamic of the classroom interactions create new opportunities for scholarship by both the faculty member and his or her students. Despite early critical success with ‘Fight Club’, ‘Invisible Monsters’, and ‘Choke’, Palahniuk’s novels are increasingly dismissed for the very transgressive content that makes them essential pedagogical tools in the Age of Trump where “truth isn’t truth,” and tribalism is stoked with claims of “fake news”. This collection aims to broaden the scholarship by examining under-represented and unrepresented works from his oeuvre and situating them in the context of their pedagogical implications. In both form and content, the transgressive nature of Palahniuk’s work demands critical thought and reflection, capacities that are necessary for the preservation of a democratic society. Contributors take various approaches to address what students can learn about writing, literature, and society by reading and analyzing Palahniuk’s texts. The collection will discuss the value of teaching Palahniuk, innovations and various disciplinary contexts for teaching his works, and reflections on some of those pedagogical opportunities. Through its multi-faceted discussion of Palahniuk and pedagogy, this collection will legitimize efforts to bring his work onto syllabi and into the classroom, where it can enhance student engagement, create new avenues for inter-disciplinary scholarship, and re-invigorate an expansion of the canon. It will also provide diverse frameworks for incorporating and interpreting Palahniuk’s writing across disciplines. Finally, the collection will offer post-mortems from faculty members who have found the “guts” to teach Palahniuk and will offer insight into what students have gained and stand to gain from a more intensive Palahniuk pedagogy.

Character and Satire in Post War Fiction

Ian Gregson
Character and Satire in Post War Fiction Book PDF

Author : Ian Gregson
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2006-01-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781847142139

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Character and Satire in Post War Fiction by Ian Gregson Pdf

This monograph analyses the use of caricature as one of the key strategies in narrative fiction since the war. Close analysis of some of the best known postwar novelists including Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Angela Carter and Will Self, reveals how they use caricature to express postmodern conceptions of the self. In the process of moving away from the modernist focus on subjectivity, postmodern characterisation has often drawn on a much older satirical tradition which includes Hogarth and Gillray in the visual arts, and Dryden, Pope, Swift and Dickens in literature. Its key images depict the human as reduced to the status of an object, an animal or a machine, or the human body as dismembered to represent the fragmentation of the human spirit. Gregson argues that this return to caricature is symptomatic of a satirical attitude to the self which is particularly characteristic of contemporary culture.

Early Modern Trauma

Erin Peters
Early Modern Trauma Book PDF

Author : Erin Peters
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2021-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9781496227492

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Early Modern Trauma by Erin Peters Pdf

The term trauma refers to a wound or rupture that disorients, causing suffering and fear. Trauma theory has been heavily shaped by responses to modern catastrophes, and as such trauma is often seen as inherently linked to modernity. Yet psychological and cultural trauma as a result of distressing or disturbing experiences is a human phenomenon that has been recorded across time and cultures. The long seventeenth century (1598-1715) has been described as a period of almost continuous warfare, and the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries saw the development of modern slavery, colonialism, and nationalism, and witnessed plagues, floods, and significant sociopolitical, economic, and religious transformation. In Early Modern Trauma editors Erin Peters and Cynthia Richards present a variety of ways early modern contemporaries understood and narrated their experiences. Studying accounts left by those who experienced extreme events increases our understanding of the contexts in which traumatic experiences have been constructed and interpreted over time and broadens our understanding of trauma theory beyond the contemporary Euro-American context while giving invaluable insights into some of the most pressing issues of today.

Sleepers - Free Chapter Book for 8-12 Year Old Readers

Darcy Pattison
Sleepers Free Chapter Book for 8 12 Year Old Readers Book PDF

Author : Darcy Pattison
Publisher : Mims House
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-11
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9781629440774

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Sleepers - Free Chapter Book for 8-12 Year Old Readers by Darcy Pattison Pdf

THE BLUE PLANETS WORLD SERIES Earth finally receives a message from space: "You only live on land. Allow us to live in the seas." Rison will implode soon. They desperately need a new blue planet, a water planet. But Earth is crowded. Will humans be able to open their hearts to an alien race? SLEEPERS, Book 1 A rogue militia. A diabolical sabotage. Is an alien teen is the only hope for either blue planet? A test-tube baby, fifteen-year-old Jake Rose is half human and half alien; he has both lungs and gills.He's been raised on the "other blue planet," Rison. However, in a horrifying science-gone-wrong scenario, Rison will soon implode. He evacuates to Earth to live with his human father's parents on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. His mother, Dayexi Quad-de is Rison's ambassador to Earth. She's tasked with finding Risonians a new home on Earth in a peaceful manner. Jake accidentally discovers that Earth's elite ELLIS forces are trying to sabotage Mt. Rainier by starting an eruption so that they can blame it on the Risonian aliens. Working to thwart them, Jake suddenly realizes his mother--the ambassador--is missing. Sleepers is the first novel in the action-packed science fiction The Blue Planets World series. This classic teen novel of finding your place in society combines with thrilling science fiction that delivers a punch. If you like the intrigue and excitement of Ender's Game or I Am Number Four, you'll love Darcy Pattison's science fiction series of survival among the galaxies. ALSO IN THE BLUE PLANETS WORLD Sirens, Book 2 is the continuing story in a science fiction trilogy. When aliens beg refuge on Earth, they ask only for a home in the seas. But what if Earth's oceans aren't empty? The Phoke, the mer men and mermaids of Earth have remained hidden for centuries. But a Risonian water-borne illness forces them to come out of hiding and take a place at the negotiation table. Pilgrims, Book 3 (coming November 1)is the exciting conclusion of an epic science fiction trilogy that pits Risonians and Earthlings against inevitable implosion of a planet. A small courageous team from Earth travels to Rison to find the cure for a water-borne disease that threatens the Phoke, the mermen and mermaids of Earth. But Rison's implosion is pending. In a rush against time, they must deal with the politics of desperate men and the tricks of a dying planet. Will they find the cure and escape in time? ENVOYS, Prequel Envoys, Prequel is the short story of the first contact with the Risonians on their Cadee Moon Base. The ambitious naval officer Blake Rose joins the team as the comparative biology specialist. He's the first to shake hands with a Risonian, Dayexi Quad-de, who immediately captures his heart. Still, he has a job to do: protect Earth from aliens.Interested in the origin of the Blue Planets World series? This is the short story for you.