Mixed Media in Contemporary American Literature: Voices Gone Viral

Mixed Media in Contemporary American Literature: Voices Gone Viral explores the development of the contemporary novel by examining voice studies and media studies through a historical lens. It investigates the expressions of multi-media vocality, exploring how cultural polemics, aesthetic forms, and changing media interact in the twenty-first century. The book highlights how viral aesthetics reshape language and recontextualize human testimony, utilizing mixed media forms to shape contemporary literature in the age of networks. By analyzing American authors' works, it identifies a politics of listening and speaking in our mediated society.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Mixed Media in Contemporary American Literature: Voices Gone Viral delves into the historical evolution of the contemporary novel by examining the intersection of voice studies and media studies. By contextualizing research within the voices of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, this book explores the manifestations of a multi-media vocality, investigating the interplay between cultural polemics, aesthetic forms, and evolving media in the twenty-first century. The novel studies presented herein trace the ways in which the viral aesthetics of the contemporary novel disrupt language, re-contextualizing human testimony by harnessing mixed media forms that shape contemporary literature in our age of networks. Through readings of American authors such as Claudia Rankine, David Foster Wallace, Jennifer Egan, Junot Díaz, Michael Chabon, Joseph ONeill, Michael Cunningham, and Colum McCann, the book examines how voice serves as a platform where identities converge, transform, and are interrogated relationally. By attentively listening to and tracing the spoken and unspoken voices within the novel, the author identifies a politics of listening and speaking in our mediated, information-driven society.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032028811