Research Catalog

Title

Epistolary responses : the letter in 20th-century American fiction and criticism / Anne Bower.

Author

Bower, Anne.

Publication

Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, [1997], ©1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 217 pages; 24 cm

Summary

• Letters - a most traditional and old-fashioned form of discourse - continue to offer special opportunities for writers and readers in the postmodern era. Bower explores the way letters shape the act of writing and writing as act.
• Epistolary Responses uses a variety of theoretical approaches (chiefly feminist and reader response) to analyze seven novels, all featuring women letter writers: Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters, Upton Sinclair's Another Pamela, John Updike's S., Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, and John Barth's LETTERS (in which six men also write letters, but the central and most original epistolarian is female).
• Punctuated with various letters - from novel authors and critics - Epistolary Responses enacts some of the give and take of the subject matter and provides some sense of the collective or composite textuality.

Subjects

• American fiction > 20th century > History and criticism
• Letters in literature
• Criticism > United States > History > 20th century
• Epistolary fiction, American > History and criticism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-209) and index.

Contents

1. Introduction -- 2. Epistolary Fiction: Space to Respond -- 3. Fair and Tender Ladies: Letters as a Response to Absence, Presence, and Property -- 4. "Help! Love me! I grow Old!": The Central Role of Germaine Pitt in John Barth's LETTERS -- 5. Restoration and In-gathering - The Color Purple -- 6. John Updike's S.: Gender Play -- 7. Delettering: Responses to Agency in Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs -- 8. Relettering: Upton Sinclair's Another Pamela Responds to Samuel Richardson's Pamela -- 9. Remapping the Territory: Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters -- An "Epistolary Fix": Dear Reader, Once Again -- 10. Epistolary Responses to the Critical Act.

ISBN

0817308369 (alk. paper)

LCCN

96003595

OCLC

ocm34113667

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries