The American Biographical Novel

Before the 1970s, there were only a few acclaimed biographical novels. But starting in the 1980s, there was a veritable explosion of this genre of fiction, leading to the publication of spectacular biographical novels about figures as varied as Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, and Marilyn Monroe, just to mention a notable few. This publication frenzy culminated in 1999 when two biographical novels (Michael Cunningham''s The Hours and Russell Banks'' Cloudsplitter ) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and Cunningham''s novel won the award. In The American Biographical Novel , Michael Lackey charts the shifts in intellectual history that made the biographical novel acceptable to the literary establishment and popular with the general reading public. More specifically, Lackey clarifies the origin and evolution of this genre of fiction, specifies the kind of ''truth'' it communicates, provides a framework for identifying how this genre uniquely engages the political, and demonstrates how it gives readers new access to history.>

About the author

Michael Lackey is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, USA. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including of The Modernist God State: A Literary Study of the Nazis’ Christian Reich (Bloomsbury, 2012), Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists (2014), and The American Biographical Novel (2016).

Product details

• Authors: Michael Lackey, Michael (Distinguished Mcknight University Lackey, Michael (Distinguished McKnight University Professor of English Lackey, Professor Michael Lackey, Professor Michael (Distinguished Mcknight Lackey, Professor Michael (Distinguished McKnight University Professor of English Lackey
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.04.2016
• EAN: 9781628926330
• ISBN: 978-1-62892-633-0
• No. of pages: 288
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies