Jonathan Franzen and the Romance of Community
Subtitle: Narratives of Salvation
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781501319846
Subjects: Salvation in literature; English literature, history and criticism
Description: "Despite the success and significance of Jonathan Franzen's fiction, his work has received little scholarly attention. Aiming to fill this conspicuous gap, Jonathan Franzen and the Romance of Community analyses each of Franzen's five novels in chronological order to reveal an interior logic animating his work. Jesús Blanco Hidalga integrates often separated formal and ideological perspectives to illuminate Franzen's stylistic and narrative choices, and in so doing, he discovers the concepts, typical of romance narratives, of salvation and redemption running throughout Franzen's fiction. Hidalga shows how these salvation narratives are used for self-legitimization -- not only by the characters, but by the writer himself. The author further re-assesses Franzen's use of realism and explores each novel within its cultural and political context. Combining critical rigor with interpretative boldness, Hidalga offers a solid theoretical approach to a major contemporary author. "--Bloomsbury Publishing.

"Working within theoretical and critical contexts, Hidalga applies a model of the conversion/redemption narrative to the novels of Jonathan Franzen"--Bloomsbury Publishing.