{"product_id":"communities-in-fiction-j-hillis-miller-9780823263110","title":"Communities in Fiction","description":"\u003cp\u003eCommunities in Fiction reads six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) in the light of theories of community worked out (contradictorily) by Raymond Williams, Martin Heidegger, and Jean- Luc Nancy. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe book's topic is the question of how communities or noncommunities are represented in fictional works. Such fictional communities help the reader understand real communities, including those in which the reader lives. As against the presumption that the trajectory in literature from Victorian to modern to postmodern is the story of a gradual loss of belief in the possibility of community, this book demonstrates that communities have always been presented in fiction as precarious and fractured. Moreover, the juxtaposition of Pynchon and Cervantes in the last chapter demonstrates that period characterizations are never to be trusted. All the features both thematic and formal that recent critics and theorists such as Fredric Jameson and many others have found to characterize postmodern fiction are already present in Cervantes's wonderful early-seventeenth-century \"Exemplary Story,\" \"The Dogs' Colloquy.\" All the themes and narrative devices of Western fiction from the beginning of the print era to the present were there at the beginning, in Cervantes \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMost of all, however, Communities in Fiction looks in detail at its six fictions, striving to see just what they say, what stories they tell, and what narratological and rhetorical devices they use to say what they do say and to tell the stories they do tell. The book attempts to communicate to its readers the joy of reading these works and to argue for the exemplary insight they provide into what Heidegger called Mitsein-- being together in communities that are always problematic and unstable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e J. Hillis Miller\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0823263118\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780823263110\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Fordham University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/02\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 352\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.05lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.00d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 09\/01\/2015","brand":"J. Hillis Miller","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44120359502079,"sku":"9780823263110","price":33.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_ad9a1e01-87c0-4e46-bf61-d68f62e98c14.jpg?v=1687413904","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/communities-in-fiction-j-hillis-miller-9780823263110","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}