Rewriting

Christian Moraru is Assistant Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

• PrefaceAcknowledgments PART I. Rewriting and Postmodernism 1. Rewriting and Late Twentieth-Century Narrative Cultural Mythology and the Return of NarrativeClassical "Underwriting" to Contemporary "Counterwriting"A Few Distinctions...And a Definition: Focus and Terminology 2. Renarrativization, Revision, Critique Intensities and ExtensitiesModus Scribendi: Discourse and Intertextual PoliticsModus Legendi: An Approach to Rewriting PART II. Rewriting and the National Narrative 1. Romanticism Reincorporated: E.L. Doctorow and the (Re)Production of America Literary Rags, Historical TattersAntinostalgic deja-lu: Performance and MasqueradeBetween the (Re)Assembly LinesTranscendent Surplus, Capital ResurrectionsThe Immigrating Scripts amd the Staging of America 2. Cold War Fairy Tales: Robert Coover's Social Romance The "Discourse of America"Alger's "Wrong Turn": Coover's Personas and Algeresque ImpersonationsThe Public Burning of the Public Sphere 3. Trascendentalist Rewrites: Paul Auster and the "National Machine" The Social "Other": Tranpositions and DuplicationsThe Textual Double: (Re)Visiting PoelandGhost(s)WritingManhattan Transfers: From Poe to Walden PondUnnamable Thoreau PART III. Rewriting Race: Models of "Cross-Fertilization" in African American Postmodernism Repetition, Reinscription, and Blck Postmodernism 1. Outwriting: Ishmael Reed's Critical Reappropriations Master of the Crossroads: Signifyin(g), RewritingImproper Appropriations: "Stolentelling" and the Deromancing of RacePurloining PoeDancing to the TypewriterNecromantic Rewriting: Bonds of Desire 2. Middle Passages: "(Re)Writing Furiously" "Rewording": Blackness and Literary AgonRutherford, the Crivener: Rewriting as Manumission 3. Hip Hop Rewriting: Toward a "Postliberated" Aesthetic Black Glasnost and "Cross-Pollinating" ReassemblagesThe Pleasure of the HypertextCo-Authoring PART IV. Writing Through: Rewriting, Plagiarism, Apocrypha The Metastases of Originality 1. Avant-Pop Graftings: Mark Leyner's Outrageous Body of Work (Re)Working Out"My Books and My Body": Inset, Insert, Textual SurgeryThrice-Told Tales: Hawthorne, Inc."Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown": A "Heinous Revision"Mutant Narratives: A Typology 2. "Re-Lettering" Hawthorne: Kathy Acker and recriture feminine Renaming, Language, PiracyHester Prynne in High School: Impurifying Puritanism 3. Hester Prynne in India: Bharati Mukjerjee's Postcolonial Letter(s) Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, RewritingApocryphal (Hi)Stories Epilogue. Rewriting PostmodernismNotesBibliographyIndex

"Moraru argues forcibly for inclusion of feminist, African American, and postcolonial points of view in postmodern criticism." — CHOICE"In studying postmodern rewrites, Moraru's goal is to answer those critics on the Left and Right who see postmodern fiction as mere recycling in our age of cloning … Rewriting is a pleasure to read, as Moraru's writing is accessible and nimble." — American Literature"Rewriting breaks new ground and resolves a debate central to the understanding of contemporary fiction." — Jerome Klinkowitz, author of Literary Disruptions: The Making of a Post-Contemporary American Fiction"The book's triple subjects—postmodernism, reading, and intertextuality—are each extremely significant, utterly current, and vigorously debated. The range of this book is exemplary: it reexamines earlier central texts and authors as well as a number of works from the nineties. It will stay fresh for many years." — Brian Richardson, author of Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative