American Fiction Since 1940

Tony Hilfer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317871248
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In this remarkable book, Tony Hilfer provides a major survey of the wealth of post-war American fiction. He analyses the major modes and genres of writing, from realist to postmodernist metafiction and black humour, the fiction of social protest, women's writing, and the traditions of African-American, Southern and Jewish-American fiction. Key writers discussed include William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Vladimir Nabokov and Joyce Carol Oates. The book concludes by exploring contemporary trends through detailed case-studies of Donald Barthelme and Toni Morrison.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editors’ Preface
• Longman Literature in English Series
• Author’s Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 From Social Protest to Solipsism
• Chapter 2 The Emergence of African American Fiction
• Chapter 3 Southern Fiction
• Chapter 4 Jewish American Fiction
• Chapter 5 Postmodernism as Black Humour
• Chapter 6 Postmodernism as Metafiction
• Chapter 7 The Sorrows of Realism: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
• Chapter 8 Fiction by Women: Voicing the Unspoken
• Chapter 9 Distinct Voices: Donald Barthelme and Toni Morrison
• Chronology
• General Bibliographies
• Individual Authors
• Index