Is literature dangerous? In the romantic view, writers were rebels--Shelley's
"unacknowledged legislators of mankind"--poised to change the world. In relation to
twentieth-century literature, however, such a view becomes suspect. By looking at a range of
novels about terrorism, Plotting Terror raises the possibility that the writer's relationship to
actual politics may be considerably reduced in the age of television and the
Internet.Margaret Scanlan traces the figure of the writer as rival or double of
the terrorist from its origins in the romantic conviction of the writer's originality and power
through a century of political, social, and technological developments that undermine that belief.
She argues that serious writers like Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Doris Lessing, and Don DeLillo
imagine a contemporary writer's encounter with terrorists as a test of the old alliance between
writer and revolutionary.After considering the possibility that televised
terrorism is replacing the novel, or that writing, as contemporary theory would have it, is itself a
form of violence, Scanlan asks whether the revolutionary impulse itself is dying--in
politics as much as in literature. Her analyses take the reader on a fascinating exploration of the
relationship between actual bombs and stories about bombings, from the modern world to its
electronic representation, and from the exercise of political power to the fiction writer's power in
the world.
Copyright:
2001
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813921921
Related ISBNs:
9780813920313
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
05/06/13
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia