William Maxwell: A selected critical biography

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Biography

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Burkhardt, Barbara

Contributors dc:contributor

• Watts, Emily S.

• Biography
• Literature, American

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1994 Burkhardt, Barbara

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9503150
(UMI)AAI9503150

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23720