Telling the Truth: The Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction

Telling the Truth: The Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction
ISBN-10
1501722905
ISBN-13
9781501722905
Series
Telling the Truth
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
280
Language
English
Published
2018-03-15
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Author
Barbara C. Foley

Description

Barbara Foley here focuses on the relatively neglected genre of documentary fiction: novels that are continually near the borderline between factual and fictive discourse. She links the development of the genre over three centuries to the evolution of capitalism, but her analyses of literary texts depart significantly from those of most current Marxist critics. Foley maintains that Marxist theory has yet to produce a satisfactory theory of mimesis or of the development of genres, and she addresses such key issues as the problem of reference and the nature of generic distinctions. Among the authors whom Foley treats are Defoe, Scott, George Eliot, Joyce, Isherwood, Dos Passos, William Wells Brown, Ishmael Reed, and Ernest Gaines.

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