Search

Hysterical Realism is a term coined by James Wood, used to describe novels such as David Foster Wallaces Infinite Jest, Don DeLillo's Underworld, or, the novel that stands at the foundation of this paper, Zadie Smith's White Teeth. The Maximalist Novel is a book Stefano Ercolino wrote in 2014, where he refers to a "hybrid genre" that appears in the second half of the 20th century, goes further into the 21st century and is characterized by ten fundamental elements. In attempting to offer a definition of the Maximalist Novel, Ercolino works with seven novels, most of which coincide with Wood's novels. These rich, ambitious novels encompassing a plethora of characters and a multicultural reality have been incredibly popular at the end of the 20th century and well into the 21st century. Using White Teeth as case study in order to provide clear examples and useful guidelines, this paper sets out to identify the reasons behind the inefficacy of Wood's attempt at defining a new literary genre and Stefano Ercolino's successful attempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes three novels by Zadie Smith in terms of content, influences and critical perception. My aim is to explore these novels and show how construction of characters, the depiction of the day to day life of banal existences, the disconnectedness that sometimes arrives in mid-life, issues of race and discrimination are a substitute for plot. Smith tends to do something new with every novel she writes, but she still has a couple of recurring themes and elements. Thus, through a comparison of the three novels, I will illustrate how Zadie Smith's narrative, through its influences and its construction of characters offers the perfect example of "plotless" fiction, as well as how this type of novel is more permissive in terms of style and more open to experimentation than novels with well-delimited plots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to give a survey on a pilot discipline - Digital Humanities - that tries to apply computational methods to literary study. Franco Moretti, Vincent Miller or Matthew L. Jockers are the pioneers of a theoretical model concerned with the possibility of distant reading or macroanalysis. The advantages, but also the risks of this theoretical framework, are subject of analysis. The new methods give a better account of global phenomena in the history of literature (aiming at restructuring the world canon), but they cannot omit the problem of subjectivity in hermeneutics. Despite its scientific premises, digital analysis is dependent on the theoretical input of the researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]