Description |
1 online resource (247 pages) |
Contents |
Criminal rehabilitation: introduction -- Enemies of the state: the atavistic mock epic -- Liminal intent: Nabokov and Burroughs -- A history of violence: from satire to transgression -- Sex offenders: stranger than fiction -- False pretenses: the antisocial hero |
Summary |
At once praised as brilliant stylists and dismissed as crass opportunists, transgressive authors -- such as Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, Martin Amis, Angela Carter, and Irvine Welsh -- have routinely baffled critics. Arguing about 'message, ' critics failed to identify this school as a continuation of the classic Menippean style, which opposes everything and proposes nothing. Like Ovid, Swift, or Rabelais, these writers present a view of life drawn from the candid and carnal folk sensibility praised by Bakhtin. At the same time, they depict bizarre sex, casual drug use, and methodical violence in language drawn from genres of conventional discourse. This contrived style lacks any explicit moral awareness and mocks the moralities through which bad behavior would ordinarily be seen. Postwar novelists struggled with the absence of a ruling social mythology; the new satirists bemoan this absence, presenting an essentially primitive subject addled by competing postmodern discourses"--Provided by publisher |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
Notes |
Print version record |
Subject |
Experimental fiction, American -- History and criticism
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Experimental fiction, English -- History and criticism
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Satire, American -- History and criticism
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Satire, English -- History and criticism
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Epic literature -- History and criticism
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Post-postmodernism (Literature)
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
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Epic literature
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Experimental fiction, American
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Experimental fiction, English
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Post-postmodernism (Literature)
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Satire, American
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Satire, English
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Litteraturkritik.
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Experimentell skönlitteratur.
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Literary studies: general.
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Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000.
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Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers.
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Literature: history & criticism.
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Fiction & related items.
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Fiction: general & literary.
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Europe.
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United Kingdom, Great Britain.
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United States of America, USA.
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Ireland.
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Literature.
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Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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Form |
Electronic book
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ISBN |
9781137341082 |
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1137341084 |
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9781299643192 |
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1299643191 |
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