Reading Theories in Contemporary Fiction

Download or read book Reading Theories in Contemporary Fiction written by Lisa McNally and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even after the upheavals wrought by Theory, literary criticism has generally ignored the act and experience of reading itself, proceeding as though something so fundamental to our experience of texts could be taken for granted. Reading Theories in Contemporary Fiction draws on deconstruction and the thought of Jacques Derrida to explore the ways in which contemporary fiction engages with reading, its power, the elusive nature of its experience and the failures of understanding inherent in it. Along the way, the book proceeds through close readings of such authors as J.M. Coetzee, David Mitchell, Toni Morrison and Philip Roth.