Barbara Kingsolver's World Nature, Art, and the Twenty-First Century

by Wagner-Martin, Linda

• ISBN13: 9781623564469
• ISBN10: 1623564468
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-05-08
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Since Barbara Kingsolver published The Bean Trees in 1988, her work has been of great interest to readers—first, American readers; then British and South African readers; and finally to readers the world over. With incredible speed, Kingsolver became one of the best-known United States writers, a person who collected honors and awards as if she were a much more mature literary producer.

From the beginning Kingsolver touched an elbow of keen interest in her readers: hers was the voice of world awareness, a conscientious voice that demanded attention for the narratives of the disadvantaged, the politically troubled, the humanly silenced. By paying special attention to her non-fiction (essays and books), this new study by renowned literary critic Linda Wagner-Martin highlights the way Kingsolver has become a kind of public intellectual, particularly in the 21st century. It provides fresh readings of each of her novels, stories, and poems.

Author Biography

Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. Her many books include Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987) and Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life (2nd edition, 2003).

Table of Contents

1. Funnels of Meaning: Flight Behavior and Kingsolver's "return" to Prodigal Summer
2. Kingsolver as scientist: Small Wonder and its importance
3. "9/11" and Kingsolver's more visible politics
4. The politics of The Poisonwood Bible: Paths beyond Conrad's stasis
5. Putting "one world" politics into permanence
6. Metaphors of ecological health
7. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Holding the Line: what IS non-fiction?
8. At the beginning: the writer's aesthetics in relation to her world concerns
9. The shift away from characterization: Kingsolver's The Lacuna and the middle stories
10. Living outside a "writer's world"
11. Kingsolver's world in all its dimensions
Bibliography
Index