The secret country : : decoding Jayne Anne Phillips' cryptic fiction / / Sarah Robertson.

• Superior document: Costerus, new ser. 165
• Author: Robertson, Sarah, 1976-
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Costerus ; new ser., v. 165.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (298 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

The Secret Country is the first monograph on the work of the contemporary American novelist Jayne Anne Phillips. Through detailed and innovative textual analysis this study considers the southern aspects of Phillips’ writing. Robertson demonstrates the importance of Phillips’ place within the southern literary canon by identifying the echoes of William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter and Edgar Allan Poe that permeate her work. Phillips’ complex attachments to a regional past are explored through both psychoanalytical and historical materialist approaches, revealing not only the writer’s distinctly southern preoccupations, but also her reflections on contemporary American society. Tracing the family dynamics in Phillips’ work from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, this book examines the effects of increased modernization and capitalization on everyday interactions, and questions the nature of the author’s backward glance to the past. This volume is of interest for a wide audience, particularly students and scholars of contemporary southern and American literature.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Prologue -- Accessing the Secret Country -- Nameless Implications: The Haunting Vestiges of the Paternal Past in Machine Dreams -- A House Divided: Class Divergence in Machine Dreams -- Preparing for Take-Off: Autochthony and Flight in Machine Dreams -- Structures of Retrospect: The Inescapable Past in Fast Lanes -- Dislocations: Retracing the Erased in Shelter -- Fantastical Remembrances: Sexual Desire in Shelter -- Leaving the Fatherland: Emasculation and Exodus in Shelter -- The Experience of Separation in MotherKind -- Textured Memories: The Remnants of a Paternal Past in MotherKind -- Almost Magical: Once upon a time … in MotherKind -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.