English
by Sheila G. Brown?
Florida State University
This study examines grotesque forms in postmodern American literature and the various modes which reflect postmodern concerns. To do so, it describes the origins of the term "grotesque" and discusses the range and breadth of its applications, a complicating factor in its definition. In a variety of contemporary American works, this study discovers a strain of affirmation not uncharacteristic of the general postmodern jubilance and celebration of the same openness and irrationality which drove the moderns to despair. Although these works invoke a similar sense of helplessness amidst precarious chance, they simultaneously restore human dignity by demonstrating a sense of adaptation combined with individualism. In particular, this study analyzes works by Tennessee Williams?, Ken Kesey, Joseph Heller, Tom Robbins, Richard Brautigan, John Irving?, Raymond Carver and Sam Shephard?, contrasting them to the earlier works of Sherwood Anderson?, Nathanael West and Flannery O'Connor?. The later grotesques evidence patterns of healing and communion affected by moments of shared nourishment, sensory experience, or insight; shared imagination or forms of creation; and even shared conflict. These grotesques that are both humorous and poignant, painful and joyous, function in a manner simultaneously realistic and fantastic to disturb and please. This trend, evident in American literature in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, moves the corpus of the period to create new modes of coping and understanding.
Dissertation Abstracts International? 53/03A
September 1992: 0809A
Order Number: DA9222366
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