An analysis of the Philip Roth's sustained pursuit of his American identity mixed with his engagement with the trope of the American Adam is the center of this paper. From the outset of his career, Roth has sought...An analysis of the Philip Roth's sustained pursuit of his American identity mixed with his engagement with the trope of the American Adam is the center of this paper. From the outset of his career, Roth has sought to be understood as an American, not Jewish, writer. But as his career unfolded, the challenges of sustaining his American identity grew, whether in Portnoy's Complaint, Sabbath's Theatre or the American Trilogy. The confrontation between American and Judaic identities increasingly became his subject as his Jewish roots threatened his American identity stemming from a Protestant, if not Puritan, literary heritage. Coleman Silk and Swede Levov from The Human Stain and American Pastoral represent the challenge best summarized by Abe Ravelstein in Bellow's eponymous novel when he remarks that “as a Jew you are also an American, but somehow you are not.” The paradox of Roth’s entanglement with the trope of the American Adam is that he both pursues and denies this identity, accepting its heroism but acknowledging its impossibility. One moment he publically declares “if I’m not an American, I am nothing,” but on the other, to be Roth he knows he must violate the Adamic ideal, prepared to renounce neither his American nor Jewish identities.展开更多
This article examines the importance of the short story form for the Bloomsbury writers and how their aesthetic theories influenced its composition, structure and content. Often overlooked in the history of the genre,...This article examines the importance of the short story form for the Bloomsbury writers and how their aesthetic theories influenced its composition, structure and content. Often overlooked in the history of the genre, the Bloomsbury short story has a claim to be an important aspect of the twentieth-century accounts of the short story form. Attention to Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Vita Sackville- West, E.M. Forster and others, such as Arnold Bennett and D.H. Lawrence, indicates their widespread engagement with the genre and the ways in which they treated it from fragmented conversation, as in Woolf s ＂The String Quartet,＂ to Foster＇s employment of linear narrative detail in ＂The Road from Colonus.＂ Formal experiments with syntax, imagery, and vocabulary and prose rhythm exhibit the seriousness of the short story for Bloomsbury authors. The influence of the Russians is particularly important with Che- kov dominating the reading and writing of Woolf, Mansfield, Lawrence and others. The very form of publication--mostly journals and magazines--is also crucial in shaping the length and structure of the short story. Attention to experimentation, as well as renewal, of the genre balances the impact of the short story on writers today and the question of a successor to the efforts and achievements of Bloomsbury＇s authors. A reading of the short stories of Julian Barnes explores this possibility.展开更多
文摘An analysis of the Philip Roth's sustained pursuit of his American identity mixed with his engagement with the trope of the American Adam is the center of this paper. From the outset of his career, Roth has sought to be understood as an American, not Jewish, writer. But as his career unfolded, the challenges of sustaining his American identity grew, whether in Portnoy's Complaint, Sabbath's Theatre or the American Trilogy. The confrontation between American and Judaic identities increasingly became his subject as his Jewish roots threatened his American identity stemming from a Protestant, if not Puritan, literary heritage. Coleman Silk and Swede Levov from The Human Stain and American Pastoral represent the challenge best summarized by Abe Ravelstein in Bellow's eponymous novel when he remarks that “as a Jew you are also an American, but somehow you are not.” The paradox of Roth’s entanglement with the trope of the American Adam is that he both pursues and denies this identity, accepting its heroism but acknowledging its impossibility. One moment he publically declares “if I’m not an American, I am nothing,” but on the other, to be Roth he knows he must violate the Adamic ideal, prepared to renounce neither his American nor Jewish identities.
文摘This article examines the importance of the short story form for the Bloomsbury writers and how their aesthetic theories influenced its composition, structure and content. Often overlooked in the history of the genre, the Bloomsbury short story has a claim to be an important aspect of the twentieth-century accounts of the short story form. Attention to Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Vita Sackville- West, E.M. Forster and others, such as Arnold Bennett and D.H. Lawrence, indicates their widespread engagement with the genre and the ways in which they treated it from fragmented conversation, as in Woolf s ＂The String Quartet,＂ to Foster＇s employment of linear narrative detail in ＂The Road from Colonus.＂ Formal experiments with syntax, imagery, and vocabulary and prose rhythm exhibit the seriousness of the short story for Bloomsbury authors. The influence of the Russians is particularly important with Che- kov dominating the reading and writing of Woolf, Mansfield, Lawrence and others. The very form of publication--mostly journals and magazines--is also crucial in shaping the length and structure of the short story. Attention to experimentation, as well as renewal, of the genre balances the impact of the short story on writers today and the question of a successor to the efforts and achievements of Bloomsbury＇s authors. A reading of the short stories of Julian Barnes explores this possibility.
