Thoene, Marcel
Toward Diversity and Emancipation

(Re-)Narrating Space in the Contemporary American Novel.

Space, America, Narrative Theory, Novels. This book unites these paradigms in critical readings of four major contemporary American authors: Jonathan Franzen, Toni Morrison, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Sherman Alexie. This book focuses on the pivotal role which space and spatiality assume in plot and narrative discourse of contemporary U.S.-American literary narratives. Embarking from a new, spatialized approach to cultural history and particularly narrative theory that might also prove useful for neighboring philologies, Marcel Thoene hypothesizes that the canon of novels selected represents a dialectic of simultaneous affirmation and subversion of the American space myth. This results in an integrative and emancipatory function of space reflecting the current dynamic toward a more transcultural, diverse and conflictive post-national U.S.-American society. 335 Seiten, broschiert (Lettre/transcript Verlag 2016)