Bøger af Michael Kreyling

Understanding Eudora Welty provides close readings of Welty's novels and short stories and the memoir One Writer's Beginnings. Michael Kreyling sifts through contemporary reviews and recent criticism in arriving at his assessment. Noting that Welty's work has been before the public and in the minds of literary critics for nearly a half century, he suggests that understanding the critical history of her canon is almost as important as understanding the works themselves.Kreyling describes the New Critics' explanation of Welty's fiction, which was based on their preference for the unity of meaning in a well-made work of art. Kreyling also traces the mounting interest of feminist critics in Welty's work after the publication in 1984 of One Writer's Beginnings. He credits feminist critics with providing some of the most refreshing appraisals of her writings in more than a generation.As he considers the many assessments and reassessments of Welty's work, Kreyling uncovers and discusses the myriad identities that critics have attached to her--that of southern writer, southern gothicist, "Southern Renaissance" writer, modernist, and feminist. Questioning the sufficiency of any single label, Kreyling suggests that Welty never wrote to a formula and never wrote the same story twice. Kreyling maps the dynamic growth Welty exhibited in the depth and complexity of her vision and literary technique over the course of her career.

In May 1940, Diarmuid Russell, partner in a newly-launched literary agency, wrote to a relatively unknown Eudora Welty, offering to become her agent. This elegant portrait traces Welty's development as a writer and Russell's encouragement of, and devotion to, her talent. Photographs."Beyond the portrait of an admirable relationship between author and agent, this work provides insight into the publishing world, the early views and prejudices toward short stories and writers from the South, the obstacles to getting published, and the individual struggles and writing habits of Welty. An enjoyable and enlightening contribution to literary history." - Library Journal

Once, history and "the South" dwelt in close proximity. Representations of the South in writing and on film assumed "everybody knew" what had happened in place and time to create the South. Today, our vision of the South varies, and there is less "there there" than ever before. In The South That Wasn't There, Michael Kreyling explores a series of literary situations in which memory and history seem to work in odd and problematic ways. Lively and frequently confrontational, The South That Wasn't There offers a thought provoking reexamination of our literary conceptions about the South.

Casts a penetrating ray on the traditional canon of southern literature and questions the modes by which it was created. Michael Kreyling investigates the historical conditions under which literary and cultural critics have invented "the South" and how they have chosen its representations.

Kreyling confronts the changing nature of our relationship to the anniversary of the war that nearly split the United States, revealing as much about our sense of place in the present as our conception of the past. These essays explore the mechanisms by which each era has staged, written, and thought about the meaning of the Civil War.