The Anti-Hero in the American Novel
Subtitle: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut (American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: May 27, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780230603233
Subjects: American - General; Literary Criticism & Collections / American; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; 20th century; American fiction; Antiheroes in literature; History and criticism
Description: "The Anti-Hero in the American Novel rereads major texts of the 1960s such a Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Slaughterhouse-Five to offer an innovative re-evaluation of a set of canonical novels know for their depictions of dissident individuals opposed to the ideological mores of the establishment. Simmons explores the anti-heroic subversions of the main figures in these novels and compares them with the previous heroic conventions such as the entrepreneurial individual, the cowboy, and the Christ figure. This book moves beyond entrenched post-modern and post-structural interpretations towards an appraisal which emphasizes the specifically humanist and idealist elements of these works, and in the process reasserts the important social impetus that lies behind them."--Jacket.