Fictions of Globalization: Consumption, the Market and the Contemporary American Novel

Description

Interpreting recent American fiction in terms linked to the growing appreciation of culture's place in the globalization debate, this book offers an innovative, critical approach to the study of contemporary literature. Prompted by the contemporary American novel's preoccupation with consumerism and the market, this book considers the implications these texts raise for the analysis of globalization and suggests that they offer unique ways of knowing and understanding contemporary social and economic contexts. Far from simply reflecting existing realities, The Fictions of Globalization reads contemporary writing's focus on consumption and the market as the sign of a productive exchange between the forces of commercial coordination and the enduringly creative and expressive patterns of modern culture.

James Annesley is Lecturer in American Literature at Newcastle University, UK.

'a thoughtful account of what happens to a nation's fiction when elements of that nation, via a neo-liberal hegemony, presume to project American values to the last corners of the earth.' - Richard Godden, Professor of American Literature, University of Sussex mentioned in Chronicle of Higher Education June 2006 "...the work is true to the double meaning of its title, and presents interesting and exciting reading of both the mythology and cultural production of global consumer society."- Aliza Atik, The Rockly Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 61, No. 1/ Spring 2007 -- The Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature