Ethics and Nostalgia in the Contemporary Novel (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521854405)

Images of loss and yearning played a crucial role in literary texts written in the later part of the twentieth century. Despite deep cultural differences, novelists from Africa, the Caribbean, Great Britain, and the United States share a sense that the economic, social, and political forces associated with late modernity have evoked widespread nostalgia within the communities in which they write. In this original and wide-ranging study, John J. Su explores the relationship between nostalgia and ethics in novels across the English-speaking world. He challenges the tendency in literary studies to characterise memory as positive and nostalgia as necessarily negative. Instead, this book argues that nostalgic fantasies are crucial to the ethical visions presented by topical novels. From Jean Rhys to Wole Soyinka and from V. S. Naipaul to Toni Morrison, Su identifies nostalgia as a central concern in the twentieth-century novel.

Author: John J. Su
ISBN-10: 0521854407
ISBN-13: 9780521854405
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/24/2005
Pages: 236
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.02h x 6.34w x 0.82d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2006 pg. 105