Description
Book SynopsisWhile the imperatives of the postmodern eventually gave order to this chaos, Wilkens explains that the same forces are again at work in today's fracturing literary market.
Trade ReviewWilkens’s most informative contributions remain his own intriguing and forthright theoretical expositions, especially his account of encyclopedic narrative. Here, he argues strongly for the decoupling of the form from national identity or narrative, but also rails against any ahistorical understanding... I would highly recommend [this book] to scholars of critical theory and post-war fiction.
—Phillip Tew, Brunel University,
Modern Language ReviewIts account of the connection between allegorical techniques and revolutionary change is nothing short of brilliant, even if its periodizing claims are (as periodizing claims always are) a bit rough at the boundaries. Literary critics and cultural historians of both the post-45 period (focusing on the U.S. and elsewhere) and of modernism will be building on and refining the insights in Revolution for a long time to come.
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Amerikastudien / American StudiesAllegory is one of the imagination's basic tools for imaginative statement, and in
Revolution: The Event in Postwar Fiction (Hopkins) Matthew Wilkens identifies the reemergence of the encyclopedic novel as allegory's latest vehicle.
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American Literary ScholarshipTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Introduction Part 1: The Structure of Literary Revolutions2. Allegory3. Event4. The Encyclopedia as Object and Metaphor Part 2: Failure and Novelty in Postwar Fiction5. Allegory, Encyclopedism, and Postwar America6. Ellison's Impure Manifesto7. Integration and Disorder in The Golden Notebook NotesBibliographyIndex
