Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction

Catherine Morley is the Academic Fellow in the Cultures of Modernism at Oxford Brookes University. She has recently published a co-edited collection of essays, American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century, and is currently working on Modern American Fiction. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Comparative American Studies, English, and the Journal of American Studies.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction Chapter One: Theoretical and Generic Considerations Chapter Two: A Transnational Inheritance: Joycean and American Ancestry Chapter Three: The Bard of Everyday Domesticity: John Updike’s Song of America Chapter Four: Transnational Paternalisms: Philip Roth’s Post-Pastoral American Epic Chapter Five: Don DeLillo’s Underworld as Recycled American Epic Conclusion: New American VistasNotes Bibliography Index

"This intellectually sophisticated book considers three major novelists, each of whom has produced a large body of significant work that has received extensive critical attention...Recommended."-- Choice, June 2009'innovative and elegantly argued.' - Rezension