World of Relations: The Achievement of Peter Taylor

by David M. Robinson

Overview

A leading figure in modern southern literature, described by Newsweek as "one of the best American storytellers," Peter Taylor secured a national following through his long relationship with the New Yorker and his widely read volumes from the 1980s, The Old Forest and Other Stories and A Summons to Memphis. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author's portrayals of the battles of strong-willed fathers and mothers with their equally strong-willed sons are at the center of his achievement in fiction.

David Robinson presents Taylor as a writer deeply concerned with the interworkings of family relationships, and emphasizes his role as chronicler of the shifts in southern culture in this century. World of Relations provides an important critical assessment of the work of one of the South's greatest writers, and includes the first extensive critical discussion of Taylor's last two works, The Oracle of Stoneleigh Court (1993) and In the Tennessee Country (1994).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813189772
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	12/14/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	785 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David M. Robinson is Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Oregon Professor of English at Oregon State University.

Editorial Reviews

Tolstoy said in : "Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Robinson (English, Oregon State U.) argues that the second half of that proposition is the literary territory of southern writer Taylor. He emphasizes Taylor's concern with family relations and their impact on the emergence of personality as well as their reflection of societal unease in a changing south. Includes critical discussion of Taylor's last two works and . Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

Encourages not only a reevaluation of Taylor's essential themes, but also new approaches that might situate Taylor's work in relation to other mid-century diagnosticians of family collapse.

Mississippi Quarterly

The study is thoroughly analytical, principally of themes rather than techniques, and robustly evaluative.

Choice

Deftly connecting struggles for independence within the family setting to larger tensions within the social structure of the South at midcentury, Robinson establishes Taylor's place among the leading chroniclers of Southern culture in the twentieth century.

American Literature

Robinson shows through sound survey and analysis how Taylor's entire oeuvre is of a piece artistically and thematically.

Southern Literary Journal

A very helpful examination of a major storyteller.

Southern Seen

Demonstrates the enormous complexity of Taylor's characters.

Virginia Quarterly Review

Sensitive, informed, and insightful, Robinson's study deftly explores Taylor's richly nuanced fictional world, particularly the complex dynamics of domestic and cultural turmoil lurking just beneath the mannered calm of southern gentility.

Robert Brinkmeyer

Robinson is smart and subtle, revealing considerable insights into the complex layers of Taylor's fiction and plays.

David Lynn

"The study is thoroughly analytical, principally of themes rather than techniques, and robustly evaluative." — Choice

"Robinson is smart and subtle, revealing considerable insights into the complex layers of Taylor's fiction and plays." — David Lynn

"Encourages not only a reevaluation of Taylor's essential themes, but also new approaches that might situate Taylor's work in relation to other mid-century diagnosticians of family collapse." — Mississippi Quarterly

"Sensitive, informed, and insightful, Robinson's study deftly explores Taylor's richly nuanced fictional world, particularly the complex dynamics of domestic and cultural turmoil lurking just beneath the mannered calm of southern gentility." — Robert Brinkmeyer

"Robinson shows through sound survey and analysis how Taylor's entire oeuvre is of a piece artistically and thematically." — Southern Literary Journal

"A very helpful examination of a major storyteller." — Southern Seen

"Demonstrates the enormous complexity of Taylor's characters." — Virginia Quarterly Review

"Deftly connecting struggles for independence within the family setting to larger tensions within the social structure of the South at midcentury, Robinson establishes Taylor's place among the leading chroniclers of Southern culture in the twentieth century." — American Literature

From the Publisher