Description
Novels began to incorporate literary theory in unexpected ways in the late twentieth century. Through allusion, parody, or implicit critique, theory formed an additional strand in fiction, raising questions about the nature of authorship and the practice of writing. Investigating theories of textuality, psychology, and society in the work of Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, W. G. Sebald, and Umberto Eco, as well as Monika Maron, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Marilynne Robinson, David Foster Wallace, and Christa Wolf, Judith Ryan identifies subtle negotiations between author and theory and the richness this dynamic adds to texts. Resetting the way we think and learn about literature, her book reads current literary theory while uniquely tracing its shaping of a genre.
About the Author
Judith Ryan is the Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Her publications include Rilke, Modernism, and Poetic Tradition and The Vanishing Subject: Early Psychology and Literary Modernism, and, as coeditor, A New History of German Literature.
Reviews
A good read for grad students of the novel and theory. Choice The profusion of examples and careful attention to detail will be appealing to the initiated and the novice alike, and will offer both a rich fund of sources and examples from which to draw... -- Yael Levin Modern Language Review A fascinating study of the degree to which theory permeates literary culture... By establishing a solid methodology... Ryan has masterfully illustrated the novel's value for advancing our understanding of history, psychology, philosophy, politics, and so much more. Modernism/modernity
Book Information
ISBN 9780231157438
Author Judith Ryan
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press