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The Visionary Moment by Paul Maltby
In The Visionary Moment, Paul Maltby draws on postmodern theory to examine the metaphysics and ideology of the visionary moment, or epiphany, in twentieth-century American fiction. Engaging critically with the works of Don DeLillo, Jack Kerouac, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, and William Faulkner, Maltby explains how the literary convention of the visionary moment promotes the myth that there is a superior level of knowledge that can redeem or regenerate the individual. He contends that this common-sense assumption is a paradigm that needs to be confronted and critiqued.-
Bookend
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Beautiful Chaos
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Popular Modernity in America
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Home
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Fire and Roses
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Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes
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Hauntings
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Speeding to the Millennium
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The Transparency of Spectacle
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Labyrinths of the Mind
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Bodies at Risk
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Bodily Discursions
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Posts
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Romantic Desire in (Post)modern Art and Philosophy
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This Is a Picture and Not the World
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Roll Over Adorno
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Passport to Hollywood
"What allows Maltby consistently to present familiar authors in a new light is a thoroughgoing knowledge of manifestations of the visionary moment from the classical sublime to varieties of Christian conversion narratives to Wordsworth and the Romantics to JoyceDespite a surprising afterlife in contemporary fiction, these disembodied visions are unlikely to outlive Maltby's long-overdue postmodern critique." — Joseph Tabbi, coeditor of Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology
"A feast for the intellect—Maltby parades one insightful observation after another, launching connections in unexpected directions and circling back to the main target of his 'postmodern critique.' His analysis foregrounds chiefly the 'ideological function' of visionarism, that is, the 'false consciousness' paradoxically induced during instances of 'illumination.' But Maltby is also aware that in cases such as Alice Walker's similar moments can activate a 'critical function.'" — Christian Moraru, author of Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning
Paul Maltby is Associate Professor of English at West Chester University. He is the author of Dissident Postmodernists: Barthelme, Coover, Pynchon.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780791454138 |
| ISBN 10 | 0791454134 |
| Title | The Visionary Moment |
| Author | Paul Maltby |
| Series | Suny Series In Postmodern Culture |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | State University of New York Press |
| Year published | 2002-04-11 |
| Number of pages | 188 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |