Naming the Father Legacies, Genealogies, and Explorations of Fatherhood in Modern and Contemporary Literature

by Bueno, Eva Paulino; Caesar, Terry; Hummel, William; Baxter, Kent; Brewer, Gaylord; Gallo, Laura Alonso; Gill, Jonathan; Harpham, Geoffrey Galt; Loichot, Valrie; Miguela, Antonia Dominiguez; Pigeon, Elaine; Reisdorfer, Kathryn; Sale, Roger; Shands, Kerstin

• ISBN13: 9780739100929
• ISBN10: 0739100920
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-30
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Naming the Father is a collection of essays on the subject of fatherhood: its enduring power, its secret roses, its unsettling provocations. Despite the considerable critical attention devoted to motherhood in literature -- and despite the late-twentieth-century focus on patriarchy -- there is surprisingly no comparable collection on fatherhood. This volume was born of the conclusion that critics of modern and contemporary literature may comprehend the father too little for presuming to have comprehended patriarchy so much.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	x
Introduction: Naming the Dead Father	1	(12)
Eva Paulino Bueno
Terry Caesar
William Hummel
Part One: The Father in Memory
The Business of Mouring	13	(16)
Geoffrey Galt Harpham
Two Fingers of Chat	29	(19)
Eva Paulino Bueno
The Culture of My Childhood	48	(19)
Roger Sale
Part Two: Fathers in Ethnic Culture
Performative Fathers and the Inessential Macho: Fatherhood in Contemporary Latino/Latina Literature	67	(29)
Laura P. Alonso Gallo
Antonia Dominguez Miguela
Negations and Subversions of Paternal Authorities in Glissant's Fictional Works (Le Quatrieme Siecle, La Case du commandeur, Tout-monde)	96	(24)
Valerie Loichot
Holy and Unholy Ghosts: The Legacy of the Father in the Plays of August Wilson	120	(23)
Gaylord Brewer
Part Three: Fathers and Daughters
The Legacy of the ``Unspeakable Father'' in Henry James's The Wings of the Dove	143	(26)
Elaine Pigeon
Generating Alternative Representations of Fatherhood: Anzia Yezierska and Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Narrative Spaces for Male Others	169	(21)
Kathryn Reisdorfer
The Daughters of Memory: The Modernist Poet as Father	190	(13)
Jonathan Gill
Part Four: Fathers and Sons
Making a Name for Himself: Paternity, Joyce, and Stephen's Adolescent Identity Crisis	203	(20)
Kent Baxter
Bewildering Love: John Cheever and the Legacy of Abandonment	223	(16)
Linda Simon
Clear Direction and Some Luck: Telos and Tukhe in Josephine Hart's Damage	239	(14)
Kerstin Shands
Part Five: Beyond the Father
Oedipus and the Modernist Aesthetic: Reconceiving the Social in Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier	253	(23)
Susan Varney
Naming the Father: Genealogy, Spectacle, and Jack Nicholson in Going Native	276	(12)
Terry Caesar
Original Chaos Restored: Paternal Fictions in William S. Burroughs	288	(23)
William Hummel
Bibliography	311	(16)
Index	327	(8)
About the Contributors	335