Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2008. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. Please note: Editorial Studies works are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for this item. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link, and fill out the appropriate web form. / A Fine and Growing Art is an annotated edition of letters and other documents chronicling the intertwining relationships and careers of Norman Mailer, James Jones, and William Styron, three prominent figures in American literature of the past century. I have endeavored to collect every surviving letter exchanged between the principals; I also include letters of other interlocutors, and published writings in which the principals discuss one another (or are discussed by others), insofar as these collateral documents touch informatively upon the principals' relationships with one another. A Fine and Growing Art is an elaborated three-way conversation, bringing forward expressions of opinion and feeling both public (in the sense of published, and often prominently so) and candid (in the reserved company of friends, or even in the near-secrecy of an unsent draft). Often funny, occasionally outrageous, consistently engaging, A Fine and Growing Art begins to unravel the mysteries long surrounding these three literary titans-about their friendships particularly, their feuds also, their evolving art, and how it all came to pass. / 2031-01-01

CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Este trabalho visa empreender uma longa jornada pelas peculiares conjecturas do período histórico que vai desde o pós guerra do longo século XX até a eclosão dos movimentos civis da década de 60, tendo como cenário Os Estados Unidos Americanos. Escolhe fazer essa viagem através do olhar sempre perturbador de Norman Mailer, repetindo o caminho feito por ele no romance Um Sonho Americano, obra objeto de nossa pesquisa. Pretende ainda detalhar as questões que assolam a cosnciencia do homem moderno, especialmente o Estado, na composição de seres que erram, e que são perdoados, argumento final de nossa análise. Tentamos dessa forma entender a escrita de Norman Mailer a partir de seus personagens, assim como pela janela de seus argumentos, ou seja, um mundo caótico que ainda está longe de ser entendido. / This dissertation aims to undertake a long journey through peculiar contexts in the historical spawn that goes from the post war of the XXth century until the explosion of the civil rights movement during the 60', having as scenery the United States of America. We have chosen to take this trip through the disturbing lengths of Norman Mailer, repeating his path in the novel An American Dream, central work of our research. We also aimed at detailing the issues that hunt the conscience of modern men, specially the State, composing beings who make mistakes and that are fully forgiven, ultimate argument of our analysis. We have tried thus understanding Norman Mailer writing through his characters, as well through the window of his arguments, which means a chaotic world that is far from being understood. / Dissertação (Mestrado)

A search for self through historical reconstruction constitutes a crucial concern of the American postmodern historical novels of Pynchon, Barth, Mailer, Coover, and Doctorow. This concern consists of a self-conscious dramatization, paralleled by contemporary theorists' arguments, of the constructedness of history and individual subject. A historian-character's process of historical inquiry and narrative-making foregrounded in these novels represents the efforts by the postmodern self to (re)construct identity (or identities) in a constructing context of discourse and ideology.