Do You Feel It Too?

Do You Feel It Too? explores a new sense of self that is becoming manifest in experimental fiction written by a generation of authors who can be considered the áheirs' of the postmodern tradition. It offers a precise, indepth analysis of a new, post-postmodern direction in fiction writing, and highlights which aspects are most acute in the post-postmodern novel. Most notable is the emphatic expression of feelings and sentiments and a drive toward inter-subjective connection and communication. The self that is presented in these post-postmodern works of fiction can best be characterized as relational. To analyze this new sense of self, a new interpretational method is introduced that offers a sophisticated approach to fictional selves combining the insights of post-classical narratology and what is called ánarrative psychology'.<BR><BR>Close analyses of three contemporary experimental texts - Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) by Dave Eggers, and House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Danielewski - provide insight into the typical problems that the self experiences in postmodern cultural contexts. Three such problems or ásymptoms' are singled out and analyzed in depth: an inability to choose because of a lack of decision-making tools; a difficulty to situate or appropriate feelings; and a structural need for a áwe' (a desire for connectivity and sociality).<BR><BR>The critique that can be distilled from these texts, especially on the perceived solipsistic quality of postmodern experience worlds, runs parallel to developments in recent critical theory. These developments, in fiction and theory both, signal, in the wake of poststructural conceptions of subjectivity, a perhaps much awaited áturn to the human' in our culture at large today.

ISBN 9042029307   Weight (grammes) 571 ISBN13 9789042029309 (What's this?)   Published in Amsterdam Publisher Editions Rodopi B.V.   Series ISSN 0923-048 Imprint Editions Rodopi B.V.   Series title Postmodern Studies Format Paperback   Height (mm) 152 Publication date 10 Mar 2010   Width (mm) 229 DEWEY 813.609   Spine width (mm) 22 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Postgraduate Pages 390

PART I		FRICTIONS
Chapter 1		ásomething urgent and human': beyond postmodernism, an introduction		13
		fiction in theory
		critical fiction
		lacking áthe human'
		self as narrative
		in practice: the case of Hal
		áas if' reality
		the background of interpretation
		the contradiction, or: a double deconstruction
		narrative agency
		cultural and subjective pathology
Chapter 2		ábeing human' in fiction: a narrative psychological approach		51
		a turn to the human
		the ápsychological turn' and its aftereffects
		who is character?
		where is character? what is character? why is character?
		the fictional mind (or the reader's mind)
		narrative psychology
		the narrative self
		the áwhat and how' of narrative self-construction
		the narrator
		symptoms
		conclusion: analyzing fictional self-narratives
		Intermezzo: three manifestoes		101
PART II		SYMPTOMS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Chapter 3		Hal I		121
		áI cannot make myself understood'
		freedom-from versus freedom-to
		More...

 Be the first to write a customer review