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Atlantic Afterlives in Contemporary Fiction

The Oceanic Imaginary in Literature since the Information Age

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  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. Sofia Ahlberg
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Part of the book series: The New Urban Atlantic (NUA)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Introduction

    1. Introduction

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 1-15

  3. Leaking Oceans

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17
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    2. Narrative without Borders

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 19-43

    3. Apocalypse Then and Now

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 45-68

  4. Unsound Waves

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 69-69
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    2. Through a Border Darkly

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 71-95

    3. A Post-Atlantic Divorce

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 97-122

  5. The Coastless Sea

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 123-123
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    2. Bridging Bereavement

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 125-145

    3. Future Perfect

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 147-175

  6. Conclusion

    1. Conclusion

      • Sofia Ahlberg
      Pages 177-185

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 187-212
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Keywords

About this book

Atlantic Afterlives in Contemporary Fiction offers fresh readings of what has been called "transatlantic literature". In selected twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts it discovers a shift from oceanic, place-based knowledge to an atmospheric, placeless circulation of information. Consonant with the displacements of the Information Age, this book reads contemporary narrative as it imagines and navigates today's virtual spaces. An important conclusion of the book is that intellectual resources are finite and should be used sustainably. Thus, arguing against a conventional comparative approach, this book proposes reading practices that resist the tendency toward an oversupply of reworked literary contexts that seems bent on matching the reach of the World Wide Web. Instead, the book reimagines place as a practice in the way it is communicated and narrated. Ultimately, this book empowers the reader to reimagine a future for narrative in the Information Age.

Reviews

"Atlantic Afterlives asks a haunting question: how are we to preserve knowledge and narrative from the smooth, cancelling comforts of pure information? The book offers no single answer, but Ahlberg's subtle and imaginative readings of a range of contemporary writers, from Cormac McCarthy to Michel Faber, from Annie Proulx to Michel Houellebecq, provide many new ways of thinking about literature's relation to a changing world." - Michael Wood, Emeritus Professor of English, Princeton University, USA
"Atlantic Afterlives asks a haunting question: how are we to preserve knowledge and narrative from the smooth, cancelling comforts of pure information? The book offers no single answer, but Ahlberg's subtle and imaginative readings of a range of contemporary writers, from Cormac McCarthy to Michel Faber, from Annie Proulx to Michel Houellebecq, provide many new ways of thinking about literature's relation to a changing world." - Michael Wood, Emeritus Professor of English, Princeton University, USA

About the author

Sofia Ahlberg teaches in the Department of Creative Arts and English at La Trobe University, Australia. Her previous publications include articles in journals such as Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Modern Literature, and Studies in the Humanities.

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