To Realize the Universal : Allegorical Narrative in Thornton Wilder's Plays and Novels.
Title:
To Realize the Universal : Allegorical Narrative in Thornton Wilder's Plays and Novels.
Author:
Dan, Hansong.
ISBN:
9783035103656
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (253 pages)
Contents:
Table of Contents -- Introduction 13 -- Historicizing Allegory 17 -- Wilder as an Allegorist 31 -- CHAPTER ONE - Allegorist in Apprenticeship: Wilder's Neoclassical Fictions and Religious Playlets 43 -- The Problem of Genre: Some Terminology Issues 43 -- Neoclassical Allegories: Wilder's Early Fictions 48 -- The Cabala 57 -- The Bridge of San Luis Rey 69 -- Early Pursuit for Religious Drama: Three-Minute Plays 85 -- Platonic Plays 90 -- Biblical Plays 97 -- CHAPTER TWO - Wilder's Generic Quest: Allegory between Drama and Epic 107 -- Allegorical Narrative Updated: Causes and Context 108 -- Dramatic Allegory in Progress: The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays 112 -- The Long Christmas Dinner 117 -- Pullman Car Hiawatha 122 -- The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden 129 -- Staging Everydayness: Our Town 133 -- Parable of History: The Skin of Our Teeth 155 -- CHAPTER THREE - Wilder's Bitter Transcendence: Toward a Humanist Allegory 175 -- To Explore a Cardinal Genre for Allegory: Wilder's Self-debate 176 -- Irreconcilable Crisis for Dramatic Allegory: The Alcestiad 185 -- Back to Novelistic Allegory: The Ides of March 204 -- An Alternative Allegorical Mode: Theophilus North and Chinese Allegory 220 -- Conclusion 235 -- Works Cited 243.
Abstract:
By mapping the contour of Thornton Wilder's major plays and novels, this book offers a fresh reading of his deceptively unfashionable art of allegorical narrative, and aims to reaffirm Malcolm Cowley's perspicacious judgment: (Wilder is) one of the toughest and most complicated minds in contemporary America. After a review of the history and scholarship of allegory, the author chronologically traces Wilder's extensive, complex and resilient engagement with allegory, a genre employed not only for literary manifestation but for philosophical inquiry. Moving expertly from Wilder's early religious playlets through his Pulitzerwinning fictions and plays to his largely obscure late writings, this study reveals that allegory and Wilder studies are two mutually illuminating topics. What distinguishes Wilder from other modern allegorists is not only his self-reflexive shuttling between the novel and the drama, but his tenacious persistence on pressing for the sublime universality of our mundane experiences in a postsacral world. Overturning the common characterization of Wilder as a preachy voice of Puritan religiosity, this book argues for the centrality of ambiguity that produces nuanced meanings in Wilder's allegorical narratives.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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