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Middlebrow Aesthetics and the Therapeutic: The Politics of Interiority in Anita Shreve's The Pilot's Wife

Middlebrow Aesthetics and the Therapeutic: The Politics of Interiority in Anita Shreve's The... T I M O T H Y A U B R Y lthough occasionally called upon to perform certain emeritus functions, the omniscient narrator has retired decisively from the scene of contemporary United States fiction. In the place of this appealingly wise but problematic figure emerges an array of speakers no less ignorant, prejudiced, and confused than the reader. First-person narrators, of course, have a long history of unreliability, but now even most thirdperson narrators, at least within American mainstream literary fiction, report the action of the novel almost entirely from the standpoint of the character or characters through free indirect discourse. A modernist innovation originally, the refusal of omniscience has become a fixed principle, especially within what is frequently referred to as middlebrow fiction. In works of this genre, the subjective perspective of particular characters assumes paramount importance, and individual psychology represents the object of interest, the site of complexity and depth, the ontological center of the fictional world. Scholars have treated the emergence of a postwar therapeutic paradigm in the United States as responsible for this literary development.1 This work was supported by a grant from The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Literature University of Wisconsin Press

Middlebrow Aesthetics and the Therapeutic: The Politics of Interiority in Anita Shreve's The Pilot's Wife

Aubry, Timothy Richard
Contemporary Literature , Volume 49 (1) – Jun 27, 2008
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Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
ISSN
1548-9949
Publisher site
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Abstract

T I M O T H Y A U B R Y lthough occasionally called upon to perform certain emeritus functions, the omniscient narrator has retired decisively from the scene of contemporary United States fiction. In the place of this appealingly wise but problematic figure emerges an array of speakers no less ignorant, prejudiced, and confused than the reader. First-person narrators, of course, have a long history of unreliability, but now even most thirdperson narrators, at least within American mainstream literary fiction, report the action of the novel almost entirely from the standpoint of the character or characters through free indirect discourse. A modernist innovation originally, the refusal of omniscience has become a fixed principle, especially within what is frequently referred to as middlebrow fiction. In works of this genre, the subjective perspective of particular characters assumes paramount importance, and individual psychology represents the object of interest, the site of complexity and depth, the ontological center of the fictional world. Scholars have treated the emergence of a postwar therapeutic paradigm in the United States as responsible for this literary development.1 This work was supported by a grant from The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program.

Journal

Contemporary Literature – University of Wisconsin Press

Published: Jun 27, 2008

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