Stories of Parallel Lives and the Status Anxieties of Contemporary Historicism

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/45264

Title: Stories of Parallel Lives and the Status Anxieties of Contemporary Historicism
Author(s): Underwood, Ted
Issue Date: 2004
Keyword(s): cultural distinction, historicism, postmodernism, retro style, Arcadia, Possession
Abstract: This article explores the conceit of “parallel lives” that characterized plays, novels, and films of the late 1980s and 1990s (perhaps most famously, A. S. Byatt’s Possession). In this subgenre, threats to cultural distinction turn into fantasies specifically about historical discontinuity, which is both threatened by and rescued by an eerie parallel between historically distinct layers of the narrative.
Publisher: University of California Press
Type of Resource: text
Language: en
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/45264
Copyright and License Information: Copyright Regents of the University of California.