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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/23720
Description
Title
William Maxwell: A selected critical biography
Author(s)
Burkhardt, Barbara
Issue Date
1994
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Watts, Emily S.
Department of Study
Biography
Literature, American
Discipline
Biography
Literature, American
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Biography
Literature, American
Language
eng
Abstract
This authorized critical biography provides the first book-length scholarship on William Maxwell's sixty-year career as a fiction writer, and reveals his literary life through research including his personal correspondence and interviews conducted specifically for this project. The study--which focuses on the novels They Came Like Swallows (1937), The Folded Leaf (1945), The Chateau (1961), and So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980)--examines how Maxwell's career reflects the course of American writing as it has evolved in this century. The author's body of writing represents a natural progression from the traditional novel to the postmodern, from lyricism to minimalism, and suggests significant development in his depiction of the self in autobiographical fiction. At the end of Maxwell's career, the parallel explorations of narrative craft and self-representation merge in So Long, See You Tomorrow, an autobiographical metafiction.
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