Title: Adolescence, America, and postwar fiction : developing figures /
Authors: McLennan, Rachael.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2009
Subjects: American fiction History and criticism; Adolescence in literature.; Metaphor.
Abstract: "Adolescence, America and Postwar Fiction argues that metaphor and the figurative are central to constructions and narrations of adolescence in America. Focussing on narratives of female adolescence, it engages with a wide array of fictional and critical work. From texts by well-known authors such as Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides to rare and archival material by the Southern writer Jill McCorkle, McLennan offers provocative readings of adolescence which highlight issues of gender, regionality and ethnicity, creating a valuable and stimulating resource for anyone interested in postwar American fiction."--book jacket.
Contents: "'Can you feel it yet?'": notes towards a poetics of adolescence in American literature -- Unpacking "something dark": narrating southern female adolescence in Jill McCorkle's The cheer leader and Ferris Beach, Josephine Humphreys's Rich in love, Sylvia Wilkinson's Bone of my bones, and Thulani Davis's 1959 -- The fly, the earthworm, the bottle, and The bell jar: female adolescents as philosophers and revolutionaries in Sylvia Plath's The bell jar, Joyce Carol Oates's I'll take you there, Toni Cade Bambara's "Sweet town," and Alice Hoffman's Properly of -- "So, to recap": signifying adolescence in Danzy Senna's Caucasia and Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex -- Conclusion: to recap, again.