Writing the Past in Twenty-first-century American Fiction

Argues for a reawakened commitment to historicity in contemporary American fiction Writing the Past in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction examines contemporary novels profoundly shaped by a sense of historical consciousness. Authors including Ben Lerner, Colson Whitehead, Dana Spiotta, Hari Kunzru and Garth Greenwell each use flashbacks, historical parallels and non-sequential narrative arrangements to emphasise the re-emergence, in a twenty-first-century context, of historical structures and circumstances. This study explores how these frequent moments of temporal slippage amount to a 'falling out of time', as characters are forced to confront the past crises which continue to exert pressure on their own contemporary moment. Alexandra Lawrie is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.

• | Author: Alexandra Lawrie
• | Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• | Publication Date: Sep 30, 2022
• | Number of Pages: 208 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 1474463444
• | ISBN-13: 9781474463447