Literature after 9/11

by Ann Keniston (Editor), Jeanne Follansbee Quinn (Editor)

Overview

Drawing on trauma theory, genre theory, political theory, and theories of postmodernity, space, and temporality, Literature After 9/11 suggests ways that these often distinct discourses can be recombined and set into dialogue with one another as it explores 9/11’s effects on literature and literature’s attempts to convey 9/11.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135024659
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/15/2013
Series:	Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	314
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Ann Keniston is an assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada-Reno, and is the author of Overheard Voices: Address and Subjectivity in Postmodern American Poetry (Routledge 2006), and a poetry collection, The Caution of Human Gestures (David Robert, 2005).

Jeanne Follansbee Quinn is director of studies for the Program in History and Literature at Harvard University and has published essays on James Agee and Walker Evans, Richard Wright and American pragmatism. She is completing a book on anti-fascist aesthetics in the United States during the 1930s, Democratic Aesthetics: Popular Front Anti-Fascism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: "Representing 9/11: Literature and Resistance," Ann Keniston and Jeanne Follansbee Quinn

Part One: Experiencing 9/11: Time, Trauma, and the Incommensurable Event

Chapter 1: "Portraits of Grief: Telling Details and the New Genres of Testimony," Nancy K. Miller

Chapter 2: "Foer, Spiegelman, and 9/11’s Timely Traumas," Mitchum Huehls

Chapter 3: "Graphic Implosion: Politics, Time, and Value in Post-9/11 Comics," Simon Cooper and Paul Atkinson

Chapter 4: "‘Sometimes Things Disappear’: Absence and Mutability in Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York," Stephanie Li

Chapter 5: "Witnessing 9/11: Art Spiegelman and the Persistence of Trauma," Richard Glejzer

Part Two: 9/11 Politics and Representation

Chapter 6: "Seeing Terror, Feeling Art: Public and Private in Post-9/11 Literature," Michael Rothberg

Chapter 7: "‘We’re not a friggin’ girl band’: September 11, Masculinity, and the British-American Relationship in David Hare’s Stuff Happens and Ian McEwan’s Saturday," Rebecca Carpenter

Chapter 8: "‘We’re the culture that cried wolf’: Discourse and Terrorism in Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby," Lance Allen Rubin

Chapter 9: "Still Life: 9/11’s Falling Bodies," Laura Frost

Part Three: 9/11 and the Literary Tradition

Chapter 10: "Telling It Like It Isn’t," David Simpson

Chapter 11: "Portraits 9/11/01: The New York Times and the Pornography of Grief," Simon Stow

Chapter 12: "Theater after 9/11," Robert Brustein

Chapter 13: "Real Planes and Imaginary Towers: Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America as 9/11 Prosthetic Screen," Charles Lewis

Chapter 14: "Precocious Testimony: Poetry and the Uncommemorable," Jeffrey Gray

Afterword: "Imagination and Monstrosity," Robert Pinsky

Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

'Literature After 9/11 can be seen as a barometer of the vitality of its critical field. In spite of the diversity of the essays, the book never loses sight of its overarching theoretical approach, namely to situate 9/11 and its immediate impact within existing discourses.' - Ulrike Tancke

From the Publisher