Essays in American Studies • Postmodern Perspectives

Essays in American Studies • Postmodern Perspectives

Edited by Kornelia Slavova/Съставител Корнелия Славова

Has postmodernism already turned demode? The book Essays in American Studies: Postmodern Perspectives (the fifth in the American Studies Series) addresses this vexed question as well as many other points of contention among postmodern scholars such as the representation of history and reality, the construction of self and subjectivity, the „cannibalization” of texts and genres, the power of logos as a driving force in postmodern writing, as well as the role of queer theory and cybertextuality in providing new models for interpretation.

The contributors come from different cultural backgrounds and they view American culture/ literature from both „inside” and „outside”, they speak in distinct critical voices, and have chosen different literary material for analysis (such as the works of Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, Kathy Acker, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner, Linda Hogan, Henry James, and others). Yet all the essays deal with various forms of postmodern subversions - i.e. subversions both deriving from and targeted at postmodernism.

The book will provide new insights and excitement for the readers of American literature in Bulgaria, as well as new perspectives upon the complexity of postmodern literary and cultural texts.

CONTRIBUTORS:

Allen Thiher

Yonka Krasteva

Madeleine Danova

Steven G. Kellman

Ralitsa Muharska

Svetlana Mintcheva

Dimitar Kambourov

Kornelia Slavova

Kornelia Taneheva

Susan E. Gunter

Alexandra Glavanakova-Yaneva

Contents

Introduction - Kornelia Slavova

Allen Thiher

Postmodern Fiction and History

Yonka Krasteva

The Representation of History and the History

of Representation in Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit

Madeleine Danova

Problematizing History

in Postmodern Native American Writing

Steven G. Kellman

Don DeLillo's Logogenetic Underworld

Ralitsa Muharska

Shifting Readabilities: a Hard Case of Masculinity(?)

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

Svetlana Mintcheva

Journeys of Wonder through Cities of Decay:

Kathy Acker in Quest of a Myth to Live By

Dimitar Kambourov

The Tramp as an American Dream:

Paul Auster's Postmodern Moralism

Kornelia Slavova

The Re/turn of the Real: The Uses of Trauma

in Tony Kushner's Angels in America

Kornelia Tancheva

The Cannibal Inside: Paula Vogel

and the Loose Bolts of the American Theatre

Susan E. Gunter

Henry James and the Postmodern:

A Queer Reading of "The Pupil"

Alexandra Glavanakova-Yaneva

Getting Lost in Hyperfiction