Postmodern realist fiction uses realism-disrupting literary techniques to make interventions into the real social conditions of our time. It seeks to capture the complex, fragmented nature of contemporary experience while addressing crucial issues like income inequality, immigration, the climate crisis, terrorism, ever-changing technologies, shifting racial, sex and gender roles, and the rise of new forms of authoritarianism. A lucid, comprehensive introduction to the genre as well as to a wide variety of voices, this book discusses more than forty writers from a diverse range of backgrounds, and over several decades, with special attention to 21st-century novels. Writers covered include: Kathy Acker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Julia Alvarez, Sherman Alexie, Gloria Anzaldua, Margaret Atwood, Toni Cade Bambara, A.S. Byatt, Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, Ana Castillo, Don DeLillo, Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan, Awaeki Emezi, Mohsin Hamid, Jessica Hagedorn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ursula K. Le Guin, Daisy Johnson, Bharati Mukherjee, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Tommy Orange, Ruth Ozeki, Ishmael Reed, Eden Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Jean Rhys, Leslie Marmon Silko, Art Spiegelman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jeannette Winterson, among others.

This book explores the most recent critical thinking on the relationship between the literary mode of the fantastic and the literary genre of drama with respect to modern theatre. Wide-ranging in time and space, the 14 essays assess 20th century dramatic works from the United States, Ireland, England, Western Europe, and the Caribbean.

The scope of the work is broad, with European and Latin American influences well represented. Recommended for collections that emphasize fiction of the past two decades. Library Journal

Drawing from a variety of contemporary literature—including such works as One Hundred Years of Solitude, Beloved, and Like Water for Chocolate—Schroeder explores magical realism as one of many common denominators in the literature of the Americas, challenging the notion that magical realism should be defined merely in terms of geography or Latin American history. By relying on an all-encompassing vision of this unique mode of writing, the author argues that the Americas share a literary tradition and validates the North American strain of the mode. In addition, she points to fundamentally similar approaches to fiction that illustrate the ways in which the Americas share a common literature and calls for increased Pan-American scholarship. Counteracting the critical tendency to label anything unreal or supernatural in literature as magical realism, Schroeder traces the mode through a variety of contemporary works, including well-known and lesser-known examples. Through a carefully articulated history and description of the mode itself, she is able to show that while Latin American and North American fiction share in common certain features of magical realism, their distinctive approaches to it reflect Latin America's third-world concerns and North America's preoccupation with popular culture and capitalism. Tracing the forces of change at work on the mode in an effort to counter the tendency among scholars to apply the label without justification, this book reclaims magical realism as a current and significant term for use in its application to literary works.

Postmodernism, as a mode of the contemporary short story, has been clearly established and recognized by short story theorists. But postmodern theory, as pervasive as it has become among academics in the last half century, has scarcely been applied to the short story genre in particular. Many contemporary scholars, nonetheless, are currently making use of certain postmodern thematic approaches to help them determine meanings of particular short stories. T Short story theory began with Edgar Allan Poe's review of Twice-Told Tales, a collection of stories by his contemporary, Nathaniel Hawthorne. But theoretical discussions of the short story languished until modernism and the new criticism provided impetus for further development. Surprisingly, though, the next large critical movement, postmodernism, failed to address the short story as a genre. But while there is little postmodern theory concerning the short story, contemporary scholars have used certain postmodern critical approaches to help determine meaning. This book demonstrates the effect of postmodern theory on the study of the short story genre. The expert contributors to this volume examine such topics as genre and form, the role of the reader, cultural and ethnic diversity, and feminist perspectives on the short story. In doing so, they apply postmodern theoretical approaches to international short stories, be they in the traditional mode, the modern mode, or the postmodern mode. The volume looks at fiction by Edith Wharton, Henry James, Katherine Mansfield, and other authors, and at Iranian short fiction, the postcolonial short story, the fantastic in short fiction, and other subjects.

Best known as the author of Heart of Darkness (1899), Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is one of the most widely taught writers in the English language. In addition to his novels, he wrote several pieces of short fiction, essays, and memoirs. He also wrote numerous letters, which help shed light on his troubled life and career. This reference book is a thorough guide to the entire body of his writings and to the experiences that helped generate them. A biographical chapter discusses research on Conrad's life and tells the story of his birth in a Ukrainian area of Poland under Czarist Russian rule, his sea career in France and England, his travels throughout Asia, South America, and Africa, and his maturation as a writer. The chapters that follow are written by expert contributors and explore each of his major works in detail. Other chapters explore his voluminous correspondence, his later novels, his short fiction, and other writings. Thus the volume provides those new to Conrad with essential biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information, while it simultaneously offers experienced readers of Conrad new critical perspectives.

This book explores the ways in which English writer A. S. Byattâ (TM)s visual still lifes (descriptions of real or imagined artworks) and what are termed â oeverbal still lifesâ (scenes such as laid tables, rooms and market stalls) are informed by her veneration of both realism and writing. It examines Byattâ (TM)s adoption of the Barthesian concept of textual pleasure, showing how her ekphrastic descriptions involve consumption and take time to unfold for the reader, thereby highlighting the limitations of painting. It also investigates the ways in which Byattâ (TM)s still lifes demonstrate her debts to English modernist author Virginia Woolf, French writer Marcel Proust, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of nineteenth-century Britain. A number of Byattâ (TM)s verbal still lifes are read as semiotic markers of her characters, particularly with regard to economic status and class. Further, her descriptions uniting food and sexuality are perceived as part of her overall representation of pleasure. Finally, Byattâ (TM)s employment of vanitas iconography in many of her portrayals of death is discussed showing how her recurring motif of Keatsâ (TM)s â oeOde on a Grecian Urnâ teases out the still lifeâ (TM)s inherent tension between living passion and â oecoldâ artwork.

As the author of The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day, and Bailey's Cafe, Gloria Naylor is widely respected as one of the most important contemporary African American women writers. This volume provides comprehensive coverage of the critical response to her works. The book is divided into sections devoted to each of Naylor's novels. Within each section, seminal articles and book chapters comment on her writing. Special attention is given to African American and feminist perspectives on her canon. In addition, many of the essays discuss the relationship of Naylor's novels to the works of classical authors such as Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare, and to significant modern writers; thus, the volume charts her sources and influence. While some of the essays have appeared previously and are among the most important responses to her writings, the book also includes several original pieces. An exclusive interview with Naylor, an insightful introduction, and a substantial bibliography are special features of this reference work. A balance of new and previously published material provides a thoughtful overview of the reception of her works. A thorough introductory essay discusses Naylor's place in American literature and the themes she treats throughout her novels. A chronology summarizes the principal events in her life and career, and a substantial bibliography lists works for further reading. A special feature is an exclusive interview with Naylor, in which she discusses such topics as the role of the politics of gender in her writings, her treatment of women, the relationship between art and morality, her views on race relations, her thoughts on the future of literature and on her most recent projects, and the manner in which she works and writes.