The Absurd Hero in American Fiction
The Absurd Hero in American Fiction

Author: David D. Galloway

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-06-30

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0292768788

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When The Absurd Hero in American Fiction was first released in 1966, Granville Hicks praised it in a lead article for the Saturday Review as a sensitive and definitive study of a new trend in postwar American literature. In the years that followed, David Galloway’s analysis of the writings of John Updike, William Styron, Saul Bellow, and J. D. Salinger became a standard critical work, an indispensable tool for readers concerned with contemporary American literature. The New York Times described the book as “a seminal study of the modern literary imagination." David Galloway, himself an established novelist, later extensively revised The Absurd Hero to include authoritative discussions of more than a dozen novels which had appeared since the first revised edition was released in 1970. Among them are John Updike’s Couples, Rabbit Redux, and The Coup; William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice; and Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet and Humboldt’s Gift. Through detailed analyses of these works, Galloway demonstrates the continuing relevance of his own provocative concept of the absurd hero and provides important insights into the literary achievements of four of America’s most influential postwar novelists.

William Styron
William Styron

Author: Melvin J. Friedman

Publisher: Popular Press

Published: 1974

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 9780879720711

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Examines the broad and far-ranging sympathies of this versatile and least parochial of contemporary American writers.

The Semiotics of Caesar Augustus
The Semiotics of Caesar Augustus

Author: Elina Pyy

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-02-22

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1474277233

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Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, better known as Augustus, was the first Roman emperor and is one of the most iconic figures in world history. Two thousand years after his death, Augustus remains a strong presence in modern culture. The Semiotics of Caesar Augustus examines the meanings and significances of Augustus in Western literary and popular culture, from the 1960s until the turn of the millennium. Drawing on the theoretical background of semiotics and classical reception studies, Elina Pyy investigates the representation of Augustus in the postmodern novels of Kurt Vonnegut and Christoph Ransmayr, as well as in the genre of historical fiction, and in screen representations from both sides of the Atlantic. Scrutinizing what Caesar Augustus stood for in the postmodern world, and the main factors that influenced (and still influence) the modern reader's interpretation of him, this book is grounded on the premise that the past, being a system of signs based on our culturally shared understanding of them, is continuously created and reconstructed by the modern audience. Arguing that the 'many faces of the emperor' can be considered to be reactions to contemporary cultural, socio-political or emotional needs, The Semiotics of Caesar Augustus shows how his character was recurrently utilized to explain and understand the ways in which the discourses of power, liberty, oppression and humanity operated in the postmodern world.

A Room of His Own
A Room of His Own

Author: Gloria L. Cronin

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2001-01-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780815628620

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The world of Saul Bellow is peopled largely by men, often intellectuals, who manifest Bellow's unique conception of American masculinity. In this timely analysis of the Bellow oeuvre from a feminist perspective, Gloria Cronin offers a stunning and insightful critique of the Nobel Prizewinning novelist. Drawing on her comprehensive knowledge of Western thought and Western philosophical tradition, Cronin also incorporates the brilliant insights of French feminist theory on Western male philosophers into her critique. Cronin's mastery of these intellectual traditions informs her fruitful examination of Bellow's explicit dialogue, rich consideration of his "misogyny," and the many masculinities he presents. Cronin demonstrates how Bellow's almost exclusively ma1e protagonists simultaneously search for and destroy a lost feminine essence that they yearn for, and in so doing create their own prisons. She also looks at the self-irony pervading Bellow, the comic dimension of his character's gender struggles, and the spiritual sensibility that attempts to reach beyond gendered and other paradigms of selfhood. A Room of His Own makes an extraordinary contribution to gender studies of masculinity and its formations.