{"product_id":"the-elusive-everyday-in-the-fiction-of-marilynne-robinson-hardcover","title":"The Elusive Everyday in the Fiction of Marilynne Robinson - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eLaura E. Tanner\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFraming Marilynne Robinson's fiction within the dynamics of everyday life, this study highlights the tensions of form and content that haunt moments of transcendence in her work. Robinson's novels, it argues, construct a world that is mimetic as well as symbolic and revelatory. Although the heightened apprehension of the quotidian in Robinson's novels often registers powerfully and beautifully in representational terms, its aesthetic intensity is enacted at the expense of characters who patrol the margins of the ordinary with unceasing vigilance. Inhabiting the everyday self-consciously, her protagonists perform a forced relationship to the ordinary that seldom relaxes into the natural or the familiar; scarred by grief, illness, aging, and trauma, they inhabit a world of transcendent beauty suffused with the terrifying threat of loss. Stiffly perched on the edge of un-cushioned furniture or propped awkwardly in the midst of someone else's conversation, Robinson's characters hover\u003cbr\u003ein the margins of a lived experience they are often forced to observe self-consciously and vigilantly. The signature acts of transfiguration that punctuate Robinson's narratives originate from and anticipate the inevitability of absence: the death of loved ones (\u003cem\u003eHousekeeping\u003c\/em\u003e), the impending death of the self (\u003cem\u003eGilead\u003c\/em\u003e), the fracture of family (\u003cem\u003eHome\u003c\/em\u003e), the repetition of trauma and abandonment (\u003cem\u003eLila\u003c\/em\u003e), the prohibition of everyday intimacy in interracial romance (\u003cem\u003eJack\u003c\/em\u003e). \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHighlighting the tensions of the uncomfortable ordinary that disrupt a trajectory of transcendence in her fiction, this book situates Robinson's novels within sociological, psychological, and phenomenological studies of trauma, grief, aging, race, and gender, as well as narrative theory and everyday life studies. Focusing on the experiential dynamics of the lived worlds her novels invoke, \u003cem\u003e The Elusive Everyday \u003c\/em\u003eargues for the complexity, relevance, and contemporaneity of Robinson's fiction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLaura E. Tanner, \u003cem\u003eProfessor of English, Boston College\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLaura E. Tanner is Professor of English at Boston College, where she teaches classes on American fiction of the last century. Her publications include \u003cem\u003eLost Bodies: Inhabiting the Borders of Life and Death\u003c\/em\u003e (Cornell, 2006) and \u003cem\u003eIntimate Violence: Representations of Rape and Torture in Twentieth-Century Fiction\u003c\/em\u003e (Indiana UP, 1994), as well as numerous essays on modern and contemporary literature and theories of the body. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 208\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.8 x 8.3 x 5.2 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e September 08, 2021\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42160935239815,"sku":"9780192896360","price":179.55,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0601\/2623\/2711\/files\/f6d5776f687050d818d8aa09e776f344.webp?v=1733276943","url":"https:\/\/booksby.splitshops.com\/products\/the-elusive-everyday-in-the-fiction-of-marilynne-robinson-hardcover","provider":"Books by splitShops","version":"1.0","type":"link"}