Postmodern Humanism in Contemporary Literature and Culture

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 Oxford University Press' celebrated Year's Work in English Studies and his book-length publications include Key Concepts in Literary Theory, Postwar Academic Fiction: Satire, Ethics, Community and Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four.

• 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