The Visionary Moment, livre ebook

Explores and critiques the metaphysics and ideology of the visionary moment as a convention in twentieth-century American fiction, from the standpoint of postmodernism.

Explores and critiques the metaphysics and ideology of the visionary moment as a convention in twentieth-century American fiction, from the standpoint of postmodernism.

In The Visionary Moment, Paul Maltby draws on postmodern theory to examine the metaphysics and ideology of the visionary moment, or "epiphany," in twentieth-century American fiction. Engaging critically with the works of Don DeLillo, Jack Kerouac, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, and William Faulkner, Maltby explains how the literary convention of the visionary moment promotes the myth that there is a superior level of knowledge that can redeem or regenerate the individual. He contends that this common-sense assumption is a paradigm that needs to be confronted and critiqued.

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Modalities of the Visionary Moment
2. Validations of the Visionary Moment
3. Metaphysics of the Visionary Moment
4. The Romantic Metaphysics of Don Delillio
5. Saul Bellow's Transfigurable Subjects
6. Jack Kerouac's Rhetoric of Time
7. Ideology of the Visionary Moment
Conclusion
Appendix: The Postmodern Sublime
Notes
Works Cited

Index