The Visionary Moment: A Postmodern Critique

by Paul Maltby

Overview

In The Visionary Moment, Paul Maltby draws on postmodern theory to examine the metaphysics and ideology of the visionary moment, or "epiphany," in twentieth-century American fiction. Engaging critically with the works of Don DeLillo, Jack Kerouac, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, and William Faulkner, Maltby explains how the literary convention of the visionary moment promotes the myth that there is a superior level of knowledge that can redeem or regenerate the individual. He contends that this common-sense assumption is a paradigm that needs to be confronted and critiqued.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791488461
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	02/01/2012
Series:	SUNY series in Postmodern Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	188
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Paul Maltby is Associate Professor of English at West Chester University. He is the author of Dissident Postmodernists: Barthelme, Coover, Pynchon.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Modalities of the Visionary Moment

2. Validations of the Visionary Moment

3. Metaphysics of the Visionary Moment

4. The Romantic Metaphysics of Don Delillio

5. Saul Bellow's Transfigurable Subjects

6. Jack Kerouac's Rhetoric of Time

7. Ideology of the Visionary Moment

Conclusion

Appendix: The Postmodern Sublime

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Editorial Reviews

"What allows Maltby consistently to present familiar authors in a new light is a thoroughgoing knowledge of manifestations of the visionary moment from the classical sublime to varieties of Christian conversion narratives to Wordsworth and the Romantics to Joyce. Despite a surprising afterlife in contemporary fiction, these disembodied visions are unlikely to outlive Maltby's long-overdue postmodern critique." — Joseph Tabbi, coeditor of Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology

"A feast for the intellect—Maltby parades one insightful observation after another, launching connections in unexpected directions and circling back to the main target of his 'postmodern critique.' His analysis foregrounds chiefly the 'ideological function' of visionarism, that is, the 'false consciousness' paradoxically induced during instances of 'illumination.' But Maltby is also aware that in cases such as Alice Walker's similar moments can activate a 'critical function.'" — Christian Moraru, author of Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning

From the Publisher