TY - JOUR
T1 - Reading for quiet in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead novels
AU - Sykes, Rachel
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This essay argues that Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels embody a quiet aesthetic of narrative that has emerged as a vibrant trend in the early years of the twenty-first century. Robinson’s fiction is not driven by the narratological “noise” of action, event, and plot, but by the internal machinations of consciousness, a reinvention of modernist themes that is also a return. By reading for quiet in Robinson’s work, this essay therefore demonstrates how the Gilead trilogy challenges the dominance of “trauma” narratives in contemporary American fiction and privileges the representation of quiet people, places, and states above the wider noise associated with Western culture.
AB - This essay argues that Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels embody a quiet aesthetic of narrative that has emerged as a vibrant trend in the early years of the twenty-first century. Robinson’s fiction is not driven by the narratological “noise” of action, event, and plot, but by the internal machinations of consciousness, a reinvention of modernist themes that is also a return. By reading for quiet in Robinson’s work, this essay therefore demonstrates how the Gilead trilogy challenges the dominance of “trauma” narratives in contemporary American fiction and privileges the representation of quiet people, places, and states above the wider noise associated with Western culture.
KW - Marilynne Robinson
KW - Gilead
KW - philosophical quietism
KW - contemporary fiction
KW - quiet
U2 - 10.1080/00111619.2016.1165175
DO - 10.1080/00111619.2016.1165175
M3 - Article
SN - 1939-9138
JO - Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
JF - Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
ER -