Hereditary misery

Scholary Paper aus dem Jahr 2007 im Fachbereich Amerikanistik - Literatur, einseitig bedruckt, Note: 1, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (Institut für England- und Amerikastudien), Veranstaltung: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Southern Literature, 18 Eintragungen im Literaturverzeichnis, Sprache: Englisch, Abstract: In times of the decline of the family as a social parameter we witness an unquestionable popularity of the family novel in American literature. Are authors writing desperately against the unraveling nuclear family, against patchwork constellations and second and third marriages? Is this merely nostalgic reminiscence, a longing for the long lost? In my paper I will argue that the portrayal of the family in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Cynthia Shearer's The Wonder Book of the Air is a rigid dissection of the pathological cycle of dysfunction, family often produces. It leaves every generation with the burden of the latter's failures and a lifelong struggle against reproducing revictimization