Overview
Eschews heavily researched, older novels and focuses on very recent work from contemporary writers
Looks at an emerging canon of contemporary historical fiction by an ethno-racially diverse range of key American writers
Interrogates notions of genre and periodization, as well as such theoretical terms as “post-postmodernism”
Examines both canonical writers (Roth, Oates, Doctorow) and under-researched ones (Nguyen, Faye, Means, Hannah, Smith) exhibiting a unique range of researchers and material
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Table of contents (14 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Imagining 19th-century America in Recent Historical Fiction
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Front Matter
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Representations of the 20th-Century United States
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This new collection examines important US historical fiction published since 2000. Exploring historical novels by established American writers such as Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, Chang-rae Lee, James McBride, Susan Choi, and George Saunders, the book also includes chapters on first-time novelists. Individual essays in 21st Century US Historical Fiction: Contemporary Responses to the Past tackle prominent and provocative new novels, for example, recent Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction by Anthony Doerr, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Colson Whitehead. Interrogating such key themes as war, race, sexuality, trauma and childhood; notions of genre and periodization; and recent theorizations of historical fiction, scholars from the United States, Canada, Britain and Ireland analyze an emerging canon of contemporary historical fiction by an ethno-racially diverse range of major American writers.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
Ruth Maxey is Associate Professor in Modern American Literature at the University of Nottingham, UK. She is the author of South Asian Atlantic Literature, 1970-2010 (2012) and Understanding Bharati Mukherjee (2019) and co-editor of India at 70: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2019).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: 21st Century US Historical Fiction
Book Subtitle: Contemporary Responses to the Past
Editors: Ruth Maxey
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41897-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-41896-0Published: 18 July 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-41899-1Published: 18 July 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-41897-7Published: 17 July 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 275
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Contemporary Literature, North American Literature, Literature, general