Amy Hungerford est une éminente spécialiste de la littérature américaine des XXe et XXIe siècles, avec un accent particulier sur la période post-1945. Son travail critique explore la relation complexe entre le génocide, la littérature et le concept de personnification, examinant comment les textes abordent des traumatismes historiques profonds. Elle étudie l'évolution de la croyance postmoderne à travers la littérature américaine et sa connexion avec la religion depuis les années 1960. L'érudition de Hungerford éclaire les qualités distinctives du roman américain dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle et au-delà.
"Examines the implications of conflating texts with people in a broad range of texts: Art Spiegelman's Maus, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Binjamin Wilkomirski's fake Holocaust memoir Fragments, and the fiction of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Don Delillo."--Jacket.
Exploring the intersection of intense religious beliefs and pluralism in modern America, the book delves into how belief can exist without strict doctrine. It highlights the significance of religious imagination in contemporary practices and in notable American literature over the past fifty years. Amy Hungerford illustrates how imaginative literature and religious practices enable writers and critics to elevate language to a transcendent level, imbuing words with a religious significance that transcends their literal meanings.
Through fascinating case studies of people working in publishing both large and small-scale, traditional and digital, this book tells the story of how new literary work emerges and finds readers in our era of too many books.