Pluralist desires

• Verfasst von: Löffler, Philipp [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Pluralist desires
• Titelzusatz: contemporary historical fiction and the end of the Cold War
• Verf.angabe: Philipp Löffler
• Verlagsort: Suffolk
• Verlag: Boydell & Brewer
• Jahr: 2015
• Umfang: 1 Online-Ressource (182 pages)
• Illustrationen: digital, PDF file(s)
• Fussnoten: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Feb 2016)
• ISBN: 978-1-78204-679-0
• Schlagwörter: (g)USA / (s)Historische Literatur
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Druck-Ausgabe: Löffler, Philipp, 1981 - : Pluralist desires. - Rochester, New York : Camden House, 2015. - 182 pages
• RVK-Notation: HU 1691
• Sach-SW: Historical fiction, American ; History and criticism
• Sach-SW: American literature ; 20th century ; History and criticism
• Sach-SW: Cold War in literature
• Sach-SW: National characteristics, American, in literature
• K10plus-PPN: 883298392

Abstract

In <I>Pluralist Desires</I>, Philipp Löffler explores the contemporary historical novel in conjunction with three cultural shifts that have crucially affected political and intellectual life in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s: the end of the Cold War, the decline of postmodernism, and the re-emergence of cultural pluralism. Contemporary historical fiction - from Don DeLillo's <I>Underworld</I> and Philip Roth's American trilogy to Richard Powers's <I>Plowing the Dark</I> and Toni Morrison's <I>A Mercy</I> - relates and authorizes these developments by imagining the writing of history as a powerful form of world-making. Rather than asking whether history can ever be true, contemporary historical fiction investigates the uses of history for our individual lives. How can we use history to make our individual lives meaningful and worthy in the face of an unknown future?<BR> <I>Pluralist Desires</I> approaches these issues by excavating the origins of 19th-century pluralism and its revival in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, revealing how major American novelists have appropriated the genre of the historical novel in the pursuit of selfhood rather than truth. Löffler complements standard accounts of the end of history with a selection of careful close readings that fundamentally reposition the form and the function of the historical novel in contemporary American culture.<BR><BR> Philipp Löffler is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.<BR><BR>

Abstract

The uses of history: From nineteenth-century historicism to twenty-first-century pluralism -- "No longer and not yet": Don Delillo and the aftermath of the Cold War -- After race: Body language and historiography in Toni Morrison's Beloved and A Mercy -- "A singular act of invention": Storytelling, pluralism, and Philip Roth's American trilogy -- Lukacsian aesthetics, self-creation, and Richard Powers's Plowing the dark