Reciting America: Culture and Cliché in Contemporary U.S. Fiction, Parte68University of Illinois Press, 2001 - 203 páginas From one nation under God to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what we say about being American is closely linked to how we understand ourselves as Americans. Through a close examination of four representative post-World War II novels, Christopher Douglas illuminates the complex relationship between being American and reciting American discourses. Reciting America provides fresh readings of Russell Banks's Continental Drift, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, and T. Coraghessan Boyle's East Is East, as well as other texts such as the cartoons of Matt Groening and the inaugural poems of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. Considering these works in light of theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Sacvan Bercovitch, and others, Douglas suggests that the American Dream and several other national vocabularies have become inflexible forms of language that disallow apprehension of the real. He explores how these novels and other texts confront national discourse and strive, though with inconclusive results, to open America up to new subject positions by offering alternatives to the dominant ideology. backdrop of a mythology enshrined in proclamations, pledges, and public documents, to be impoverished by the pervasive use of cliche, which he identifies as figures of speech that stimulate emotion or action while short-circuiting reflection. In its extreme cliched form, the American Dream consists of nothing more than advertising slogans and popular culture images; yet these pronouncements retain a powerful hold on the will and imagination of U.S. citizens. Probing the limits of public discourse, the power of the American Dream cliche, and the complexity of identity in the United States, Reciting America is a sophisticated look at the range of motion available to individuals trying to act on the official texts that produce them as social beings. |
Términos y frases comunes
African American Amer Ameri American discourse American dream American subjects Amossy Angelou's argues articulate Asian American Bakhtin Banks's becomes Bercovitch Black Boy Bob Dubois Bob's Boyle Boyle's Brotherhood centripetal characterized China Chinese American citation Communist Party consciousness Continental Drift Coraghessan Boyle critics critique describes discourse of Booker East Is East economic Ellison's novel ethnic minority fiction figure Frank Chin girl Hiro Hiro's ican idea identity ideology individual instance Invisible ironic irony Japanese kind Kingston language literary Loyalty Day Matt Groening Maxine Hong Kingston Maxine Hong Kingston's metaphor mother narrative narrator narrator's nation Negro phrase political possibility preoccupied racial racist clichés Ralph Ellison Ralph Ellison's reader realism Reciting America relation repeated repetition Russell Banks speech stereotype story suggests tale talk tell texts tion traditional Trueblood Ts'ai Yen's United Vanise vocabulary voice Vološinov Washington Woman Warrior Wong words Wright's writing Zijderveld