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The Madman as Hero in Contemporary American Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Michael P. Woolf
Michael P. Woolf
Affiliation:
The Oxford School, Padua
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Extract

In this paper I want to engage in a speculative manner with a number of issues, both moral and stylistic, that reverberate around the contemporary novel. I have chosen to focus this discussion on the idea of the mad hero because, in the concepts of madness and the heroic, vital elements in contemporary aesthetics coincide.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , August 1976 , pp. 257 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 Roth, Philip, ‘Writing American Fiction’, Commentary, 21, 3 (03 1961)Google Scholar. This is a pervasive analysis. See, for example, Friedman, Bruce Jay's introduction to Black Humor (New York, 1965)Google Scholar or Charyn, Jerome's introduction to The Single Voice (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

2 Charyn, Jerome, On The Darkening Green (New York, 1965), p, 164Google Scholar.

3 Barth, John, The End of the Road (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 72–3Google Scholar.

4 Bellow, Saul, Mr Sammler's Planet (London, 1970), p. 74Google Scholar.

5 Markfield, Wallace, To An Early Grave (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 58–9Google Scholar.

6 Roth, Philip, Portnoy's Complaint (London, 1969), pp. 273–4Google Scholar.

7 Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (New York, 1964), pp. 302–3Google Scholar.

8 Portnoy's Complaint, p. 246.

9 Ibid., p. 248.

10 Ibid., p. 72.

11 Ibid., p. 124.

12 Ibid., p. 9.

13 Roth, Philip, The Great American Novel (London, 1973), p. 381Google Scholar.

14 Wallant, Edward, Children At the Gate (New York, 1964), pp. 128–9Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 150.