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Chances are : contingency, queer theory, and American literature /

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This innovative work makes use of psychoanalytic, queer, and narrative theories to read nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature and demonstrate how the concept of contingency--whether chance, accident, luck, or mutation--enriches our understanding of how queer sexualities are articulate...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rohy, Valerie (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
Subjects:
American literature > 19th century > History and criticism.
American literature > 20th century > History and criticism.
Homosexuality in literature.
Queer theory.
Homosexuality and literature.
Gender identity in literature.
Homosexualité dans la littérature.
Théorie queer.
Homosexualité et littérature.
Identité de genre dans la littérature.
American literature.
Homosexualität > Motiv
Kontingenz > Motiv
Literatur
Queer-Theorie
USA
1800-1999
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Literary criticism.
Critiques littéraires.
Table of Contents:
  • 1. Introduction: Taking Chances
  • PART I Heterosexual Necessity
  • 2. Gambling on marriage: The House of Mirth and The Pit
  • 3. The calculus of probabilities: Poe, contingency, and detection
  • PART II Accidental narratives
  • 4. Racism, retroaction, and the marriage plot: Alger and Emerson
  • 5. Racial contingency: Iola Leroy and Passing
  • PART III Contingent Reading
  • 6. Interpretation by Chance: Bechdel, Winnicott, Woolf
  • 7. Exchanging hours: a dialogue on time
  • 8. Conclusion: not knowing.