The Visionary Moment: A Postmodern CritiqueIn 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Modalities of the Visionary Moment | 13 |
Validations of the Visionary Moment | 33 |
Metaphysics of the Visionary Moment | 49 |
The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo | 75 |
Saul Bellows Transfigurable Subjects | 87 |
Jack Kerouacs Rhetoric of Time | 101 |
Ideology of the Visionary Moment | 113 |
Conclusion | 125 |
The Postmodern Sublime | 127 |
Notes | 131 |
| 149 | |
| 163 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Annie Dillard artist assumption Beja belief Bellow's cognition concept conjuncture consciousness context conversion narrative cosmic critical literacy culture defined Dharma Bums Dillard discourse Don DeLillo emphasis added eternal example Faulkner feeling fiction Flannery O'Connor Harmondsworth heart Hence high-modernist human idea ideological illumination insight insofar instantaneous intuition invokes Jack Kerouac Joyce Kerouac Langbaum language literary convention literary epiphany literary visionary literature Lyotard meaning metanarrative metaphysical mode modern modernist Moreover mystical Naipaul narrator nature notion novel observes paradigm Penguin perception Poetics political postmodern critique premised Press primordial production radical reader recall recounted redemptive revealed rhetoric Robert Coover Romantic Sal Paradise sense significance social soul spiritual community spontaneous Stephen Hero story strategies sublime sudden suddenly suggest temporal tion Toyota Celica Trans transcendent transfiguration truth claims typically validate vision visionary experience visionary moments Walter Abish White Noise words Wordsworth writing York