Rewriting
Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning
Will be published approx. on 27. September 2001
Book
Hardback
248 pages
978-0-7914-5107-6 (ISBN)
Description
Examines the tendency of post-World War II writers to rewrite earlier narratives by Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, and others.
Does the postmodern process of rewriting stories by earlier writers point to a crisis of originality in our cloning culture? In Rewriting, the first systematic examination of this tendency in late twentieth-century American fiction, Christian Moraru answers this question with a "no" by examining a wide range of representative writers including E. L. Doctorow, Robert Coover, Paul Auster, Charles Johnson, Ishmael Reed, Trey Ellis, Kathy Acker, Mark Leyner, and Bharati Mukherjee, among others. Moraru shows that in reworking the emblematic nineteenth-century short stories and novels of Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Alger, Stowe, Thoreau, Twain, and others, postmodern American writers take on-and critically revise-a whole set of values and notions that shape our cultural mythology. Accordingly, Moraru redefines postmodernism in general, and postmodern rewriting in particular, as a culturally innovative and politically enabling phenomenon.
Does the postmodern process of rewriting stories by earlier writers point to a crisis of originality in our cloning culture? In Rewriting, the first systematic examination of this tendency in late twentieth-century American fiction, Christian Moraru answers this question with a "no" by examining a wide range of representative writers including E. L. Doctorow, Robert Coover, Paul Auster, Charles Johnson, Ishmael Reed, Trey Ellis, Kathy Acker, Mark Leyner, and Bharati Mukherjee, among others. Moraru shows that in reworking the emblematic nineteenth-century short stories and novels of Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Alger, Stowe, Thoreau, Twain, and others, postmodern American writers take on-and critically revise-a whole set of values and notions that shape our cultural mythology. Accordingly, Moraru redefines postmodernism in general, and postmodern rewriting in particular, as a culturally innovative and politically enabling phenomenon.
Reviews / Votes
"Moraru argues forcibly for inclusion of feminist, African American, and postcolonial points of view in postmodern criticism." - CHOICE"In studying postmodern rewrites, Moraru's goal is to answer those critics on the Left and Right who see postmodern fiction as mere recycling in our age of cloning ... Rewriting is a pleasure to read, as Moraru's writing is accessible and nimble." - American Literature
"Rewriting breaks new ground and resolves a debate central to the understanding of contemporary fiction." - Jerome Klinkowitz, author of Literary Disruptions: The Making of a Post-Contemporary American Fiction
"The book's triple subjects-postmodernism, reading, and intertextuality-are each extremely significant, utterly current, and vigorously debated. The range of this book is exemplary: it reexamines earlier central texts and authors as well as a number of works from the nineties. It will stay fresh for many years." - Brian Richardson, author of Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Albany, NY
United States
Target group
College/higher education
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Product notice
Laminated cover
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
449 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7914-5107-6 (9780791451076)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Christian Moraru is Assistant Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Content
Preface
Acknowledgments
PART I. Rewriting and Postmodernism
1. Rewriting and Late Twentieth-Century Narrative
Cultural Mythology and the Return of Narrative
Classical "Underwriting" to Contemporary "Counterwriting"
A Few Distinctions...
And a Definition: Focus and Terminology
2. Renarrativization, Revision, Critique
Intensities and Extensities
Modus Scribendi: Discourse and Intertextual Politics
Modus Legendi: An Approach to Rewriting
PART II. Rewriting and the National Narrative
1. Romanticism Reincorporated: E.L. Doctorow and the (Re)Production of America
Literary Rags, Historical Tatters
Antinostalgic deja-lu: Performance and Masquerade
Between the (Re)Assembly Lines
Transcendent Surplus, Capital Resurrections
The Immigrating Scripts amd the Staging of America
2. Cold War Fairy Tales: Robert Coover's Social Romance
The "Discourse of America"
Alger's "Wrong Turn": Coover's Personas and Algeresque Impersonations
The Public Burning of the Public Sphere
3. Trascendentalist Rewrites: Paul Auster and the "National Machine"
The Social "Other": Tranpositions and Duplications
The Textual Double: (Re)Visiting Poeland
Ghost(s)Writing
Manhattan Transfers: From Poe to Walden Pond
Unnamable Thoreau
PART III. Rewriting Race: Models of "Cross-Fertilization" in African American Postmodernism
Repetition, Reinscription, and Blck Postmodernism
1. Outwriting: Ishmael Reed's Critical Reappropriations
Master of the Crossroads: Signifyin(g), Rewriting
Improper Appropriations: "Stolentelling" and the Deromancing of Race
Purloining Poe
Dancing to the Typewriter
Necromantic Rewriting: Bonds of Desire
2. Middle Passages: "(Re)Writing Furiously"
"Rewording": Blackness and Literary Agon
Rutherford, the Crivener: Rewriting as Manumission
3. Hip Hop Rewriting: Toward a "Postliberated" Aesthetic
Black Glasnost and "Cross-Pollinating" Reassemblages
The Pleasure of the Hypertext
Co-Authoring
PART IV. Writing Through: Rewriting, Plagiarism, Apocrypha
The Metastases of Originality
1. Avant-Pop Graftings: Mark Leyner's Outrageous Body of Work
(Re)Working Out
"My Books and My Body": Inset, Insert, Textual Surgery
Thrice-Told Tales: Hawthorne, Inc.
"Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown": A "Heinous Revision"
Mutant Narratives: A Typology
2. "Re-Lettering" Hawthorne: Kathy Acker and recriture feminine
Renaming, Language, Piracy
Hester Prynne in High School: Impurifying Puritanism
3. Hester Prynne in India: Bharati Mukjerjee's Postcolonial Letter(s)
Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, Rewriting
Apocryphal (Hi)Stories
Epilogue. Rewriting Postmodernism
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
PART I. Rewriting and Postmodernism
1. Rewriting and Late Twentieth-Century Narrative
Cultural Mythology and the Return of Narrative
Classical "Underwriting" to Contemporary "Counterwriting"
A Few Distinctions...
And a Definition: Focus and Terminology
2. Renarrativization, Revision, Critique
Intensities and Extensities
Modus Scribendi: Discourse and Intertextual Politics
Modus Legendi: An Approach to Rewriting
PART II. Rewriting and the National Narrative
1. Romanticism Reincorporated: E.L. Doctorow and the (Re)Production of America
Literary Rags, Historical Tatters
Antinostalgic deja-lu: Performance and Masquerade
Between the (Re)Assembly Lines
Transcendent Surplus, Capital Resurrections
The Immigrating Scripts amd the Staging of America
2. Cold War Fairy Tales: Robert Coover's Social Romance
The "Discourse of America"
Alger's "Wrong Turn": Coover's Personas and Algeresque Impersonations
The Public Burning of the Public Sphere
3. Trascendentalist Rewrites: Paul Auster and the "National Machine"
The Social "Other": Tranpositions and Duplications
The Textual Double: (Re)Visiting Poeland
Ghost(s)Writing
Manhattan Transfers: From Poe to Walden Pond
Unnamable Thoreau
PART III. Rewriting Race: Models of "Cross-Fertilization" in African American Postmodernism
Repetition, Reinscription, and Blck Postmodernism
1. Outwriting: Ishmael Reed's Critical Reappropriations
Master of the Crossroads: Signifyin(g), Rewriting
Improper Appropriations: "Stolentelling" and the Deromancing of Race
Purloining Poe
Dancing to the Typewriter
Necromantic Rewriting: Bonds of Desire
2. Middle Passages: "(Re)Writing Furiously"
"Rewording": Blackness and Literary Agon
Rutherford, the Crivener: Rewriting as Manumission
3. Hip Hop Rewriting: Toward a "Postliberated" Aesthetic
Black Glasnost and "Cross-Pollinating" Reassemblages
The Pleasure of the Hypertext
Co-Authoring
PART IV. Writing Through: Rewriting, Plagiarism, Apocrypha
The Metastases of Originality
1. Avant-Pop Graftings: Mark Leyner's Outrageous Body of Work
(Re)Working Out
"My Books and My Body": Inset, Insert, Textual Surgery
Thrice-Told Tales: Hawthorne, Inc.
"Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown": A "Heinous Revision"
Mutant Narratives: A Typology
2. "Re-Lettering" Hawthorne: Kathy Acker and recriture feminine
Renaming, Language, Piracy
Hester Prynne in High School: Impurifying Puritanism
3. Hester Prynne in India: Bharati Mukjerjee's Postcolonial Letter(s)
Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, Rewriting
Apocryphal (Hi)Stories
Epilogue. Rewriting Postmodernism
Notes
Bibliography
Index