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Bezig met laden... New York and Toronto Novels After Postmodernism: Explorations of the Urbandoor Caroline Rosenthal
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Cities are material and symbolic spaces through which nations define their cultural identities. The great cities that have arisen on the North American continent have stimulated the imaginations of the United States and Canada in very different ways. This first comparative study of North American urban fiction starts out by delineating the sociohistorical and literary contexts in which cities grew into diverging symbolic spaces in American and Canadian culture. After an overview of recent developments in the cultural conception of urban space, the book takes New York and Toronto fiction as exemplary for exploring representations of the urban after postmodernism. It analyzes four twenty-first-century novels: two set in New York - Siri Hustvedt's 'What I Loved' and Paule Marshall's 'The Fisher King' - and two set in Toronto - Carol Shields's 'Unless' and Dionne Brand's 'What We All Long For.' While these texts continue to echo the specific traditions of nation building and canon formation in the United States and Canada, they also share certain features. All of them investigate the affective crossroads of the city while returning to a more realistic mode of representation. Caroline Rosenthal is Professor of American Literature at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.609358209732Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: Geen beoordelingen.Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
My one critique would be one of breadth. Rosenthal attempts to prove her thesis in 2011 through four somewhat obscure novels that were published at the beginning of the 21st century. While these novels validate her thesis, I would've been more convinced of her arguments if she maintained her extensive analysis through a larger sample size that was more representative of all the work published since 2000 and that were set in NY and Toronto. While she examined these four novels as postmodern works from within the American/Canadian literature traditions, I don't see why her thesis couldn't also tackle works set in other metropolises, e.g. London and Tokyo. In retrospect, her four novels seem untypical of writing today about the city, they led no reinvigorating realist movement of their own vis-à-vis new postmodern interpretations of the city, and for the sake of scholarly rigour these are just four novels against an annual sea of novels that potentially disagree with her thesis.
Nevertheless, Rosenthal's collection of essays is proof of substantial and inspired research. It is also invaluable for writers and scholars who want to understand postmodern depictions of the metropolis.