Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781557534989)

In his book Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction, Thomas O. Beebee analyzes fictional texts as a "discursive territoriality" that shape readers' notions of (and ambivalence about) national and regional belonging. Several canonical works of literary fiction have provided their readers with verbal maps that in their depictions of boundary spaces construct indirect images of national territory and geography. Beebee analyzes the historical and cultural diversity in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's, Nikolai Gogol's, and Ivan Turgenev's competing geographies of Russia and its empire, Euclides da Cunha's ambivalent nomination of the sertanejo (backlander) as the "bedrock of the Brazilian race," William Faulkner's and Jose Lins do Rego's cultural memories of the plantation, Jose Maria Arguedas's novelistic ethnogeographies of Andean culture, Juan Benet's construction of region as both metaphor and metonym for Francoist Spain, and the "utopian" North American (U.S. and Canada) desert landscapes of Mary Austin, Nicole Brossard, and Joy Harjo.

Author: Thomas O. Beebee
ISBN-10: 1557534985
ISBN-13: 9781557534989
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/01/2008
Pages: 200
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 01/09/2009 pg. 18
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2009 pg. 285