TODD F. DAVIS is Assistant Professor of English at Penn State Altoona, USA. He is the author of two collections of poetry entitled Ripe and Some Heaven. His book-length publications include Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory, Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory and Kurt Vonnegut's Crusade, Or, How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a New Kind of Humanism. KENNETH WOMACK is Associate Professor of English and Head of the Division of Arts and Humanities at Penn State Altoona, USA. He serves as Co-Editor of O

• Acknowledgements Introduction: Necessary Negotiations PART I: INTO THIS WORLD: BODY AND SPIRIT IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE Embracing the Fall: Reconfiguring Redemption in Jim Harrison's The Woman Lit by Fireflies , Dalva and The Road Home Writing Back Through the Body: The Communion of Flesh and Spirit in the Work of Mary Swander Always Becoming: The Nature of Transcendence in the Poetry of Mary Oliver PART II: STORY AND POSSIBILITY: NARRATING MAPPING AS ETHICAL CONSTRUCT Saints, Sinners and the Dickensian Novel: The Ethics of Storytelling in John Irving's The Cider House Rules Curses and Blessings: Identity and Essentialism in the Work of Sherman Alexie "Our Long National Nightmare is Over": Moral Repair and Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides "What's Filipino? What's Authentic? What's in the Blood?": Alterity and Ethics in the Novels of Jessica Hagedorn PART III: MUSIC, IMAGE, AND ACTIVISM: A MEANS TO AN OPEN ENDING "Everybody had a Hard Year": The White Album and the Beatles' Poetic of Apocalypse Finding Forgiveness, or Something Like It, in David Mamet's House of Games , The Spanish Prisoner , and State and Main Performing Empowerment: Revisiting Libertation Pedagogy in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues How Do You Solve a Problem Like Magnolia ? Conclusion: Postmodern Humanism and the Ethical Future Notes References Index

"With this book, Davis and Womack achieve a victory over the silence imposed by a postmodern awareness that all meaning is constructed." - Choice