Character and Satire in Post War Fiction Contributor(s): Gregson, Ian (Author) |
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ISBN: 1847062652 ISBN-13: 9781847062659 Publisher: Continuum OUR PRICE: $51.43 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2008 Annotation: This book, new in paperback, offers new readings of novels by major British and American postwar novelists. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism |
Dewey: 823.914 |
Series: Continuum Literary Studies |
Physical Information: 0.41" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (0.61 lbs) 192 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: 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. |