The Secret Country: Decoding Jayne Anne Phillips' Cryptic Fiction

· Costerus (Atlantic Highlands) Book 165 · Rodopi
Ebook
291
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

The Secret Country is the first monograph on the work of the contemporary American novelist Jayne Anne Phillips. Through detailed and innovative textual analysis this study considers the southern aspects of Phillips' writing. Robertson demonstrates the importance of Phillips' place within the southern literary canon by identifying the echoes of William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter and Edgar Allan Poe that permeate her work.
Phillips' complex attachments to a regional past are explored through both psychoanalytical and historical materialist approaches, revealing not only the writer's distinctly southern preoccupations, but also her reflections on contemporary American society. Tracing the family dynamics in Phillips' work from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, this book examines the effects of increased modernization and capitalization on everyday interactions, and questions the nature of the author's backward glance to the past. This volume is of interest for a wide audience, particularly students and scholars of contemporary southern and American literature.

About the author

Sarah Robertson is a Senior Lecturer of American Literature at the University of the West of England, Bristol.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.