The American biographical novel
By: Michael Lackey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2016
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
ISBN-13: 9781628926347; 9781628926330
Subjects: Literature and history; Literature and society; History and criticism; LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General; Truth in literature; American Historical fiction; History in literature; Politics in literature; American Biographical fiction; History
Description: "Before the 1970s, there were only a few acclaimed biographical novels. But starting in the 1980s, there was a veritable explosion of this genre of fiction, leading to the publication of spectacular biographical novels about figures as varied as Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, and Marilyn Monroe, just to mention a notable few. This publication frenzy culminated in 1999 when two biographical novels (Michael Cunningham's The Hours and Russell Banks' Cloudsplitter) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and Cunningham's novel won the award. In The American Biographical Novel, Michael Lackey charts the shifts in intellectual history that made the biographical novel acceptable to the literary establishment and popular with the general reading public. More specifically, Lackey clarifies the origin and evolution of this genre of fiction, specifies the kind of 'truth' it communicates, provides a framework for identifying how this genre uniquely engages the political, and demonstrates how it gives readers new access to history"--

"The American Biographical Novel examines the rise of this genre of fiction, how it engages and historicizes the political, the unique kind of 'truth' it communicates, and how it contributes to our collective understanding of culture and consciousness"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Chapter One: The Rise and Legitimization of the American Biographical Novel; title: Chapter Two: The Fictional Truth of the Biographical Novel: The Case of Ludwig Wittgenstein; title: Chapter Three: Surrealism, Historical Representation, and the Biographical Novel; title: Chapter Four: Zora Neale Hurston and the Art of Political Critique in the Biblical Biographical Novel; title: Chapter Five: Dual Temporal Truths in the Biographical novel; title: Chapter Six: The Biographical Novel: A Misappropriated Life or a Truthful Fiction?; title: Bibliography; title: Index.