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Author Punday, Daniel

Title Five strands of fictionality : the institutional construction of contemporary American fiction / Daniel Punday
Published Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [2010]
©2010

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 240 pages)
Contents Myth and the institutional construction of postmodernism in The Friday book -- Folk culture, the archive, and the work of the imaginary -- Fiction, fraud, and fakes -- Style and symptom in postmodern science fiction -- Role playing games, possible world theory, and the fictionality of assemblage -- Institutional sutures in electronic writing -- Fictionality in the public sphere
Summary "Fictions, we are so often told, are everywhere in America today. The extravagant claims of advertising are everywhere, much of the day's news concerns "pseudo-events" like rallies or ceremonies staged so that they can be reported on, and philosophers doubt even the possibility of any knowledge being objective. Thus we seem less and less able to distinguish between the real and the invented. In Five Strands of Fictionality: The Institutional Construction of Contemporary American Fiction, Daniel Punday examines the "postmodern" expansion of fictionality--the feeling today that the line between the real and the invented is harder to draw--and argues that this feeling reflects a struggle by different cultural groups to define how we tell and use "literary" stories. He discusses the literary texts of John Barth, Alice Walker, and Ishmael Reed; paraliterary forms like science fiction and electronic writing; and resolutely nonliterary texts, especially role-playing games, in terms of how each responds to the institution of literature through its definition of fictionality."
"For too long, postmodernism has been described by easy generalizations--relativist, indeterminate, commercialized--that have rendered the term nearly worthless. Punday applies a more nuanced understanding of fictionality to a variety of contemporary narrative forms that occupy different locations within postmodern literary culture. Approaching postmodernism as a configuration of institutions that legitimize fictionality, he illuminates the nature of creative writing and the conflicts between different literary groups in America today"--Publisher's description
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-232) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
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Subject Barth, John, 1930- -- Criticism and interpretation
Walker, Alice, 1944- -- Criticism and interpretation
Reed, Ishmael, 1938- -- Criticism and interpretation
SUBJECT Barth, John, 1930- fast
Reed, Ishmael, 1938- fast
Walker, Alice, 1944- fast
Barth, John, 1930- -- Criticism and interpretation. nli
Subject American fiction -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc
Postmodernism (Literature) -- United States
Fiction -- History and criticism.
Fictions, Theory of.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- General.
Fiction
Fictions, Theory of
Postmodernism (Literature)
Roman -- amerikanischer -- Postmodernismus.
American fiction -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.
Postmodernism (Literature) -- United States.
Fiction -- History and criticism.
Roman américain -- 1945- -- Histoire et critique -- Théorie, etc.
Postmodernisme et littérature -- États-Unis.
Amerikanska romaner -- historia.
Postmodernism (litteratur) -- Förenta staterna.
United States
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Literary criticism
Literary criticism.
Critiques littéraires.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780814280683
0814280684
9780814271315
0814271316