Title: Trauma, postmodernism and the aftermath of World War II
First published: 2009
Description: The radical, 'postmodernist' waves of experimentation that swept Anglo-American fiction from the late 1960s constitute a delayed response to the upheavals of the Second World War, yet the legacy of the war barely figures in prevalent accounts of the postmodernist movement. As Paul Crosthwaite shows in this provocative book, to recognize the significance of the war in contemporary culture is to acknowledge that postmodernism, as a sensibility, aesthetic style, and mode of thought, must be entirely reconceived. Challenging dominant theorizations of the postmodern as depthless and dehistoricized, Crosthwaite demonstrates that postmodernism has not abandoned history but has rather reformulated it in terms of trauma, trauma that is traceable, time and again, to the catastrophes of the 1940s. The book stages a revealing confrontation between influential theories of trauma and postmodernism and offers innovative close readings of key texts by Virginia Woolf, Thomas Pynchon, Michael Moorcock, J.G. Ballard, Richard Powers and Ian McEwan.
Subjects: American fiction, English fiction, History, History and criticism, Literature and the war, Postmodernism (Literature), Psychic trauma in literature, Psychological aspects, Psychological aspects of World War, 1939-1945, War and literature, War in literature, World War, 1939-1945, World war, 1939-1945, literature and the war, English fiction, history and criticism, 20th century, American fiction, history and criticism, 20th century, World war, 1939-1945, psychological aspects, LITERARY CRITICISM, European, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, European history, Second World War, Literary essays, Cultural studies
Places: Great Britain, United States
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PR888.W66 C76 2009