The Fantasy of Youth in Philip Roth's Later Novels

Article Sidebar

Open / Download PDF
Published: Dec 10, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/lincu-2020-2-0179
Keywords:
youth illness sexuality aging female identity

Main Article Content

Gabriela Glăvan
West University of Timișoara, Romania

Abstract

I intend to explore Philip Roth’s strategy of affirming youth as core value among his major themes revealing the experience of aging, illness and loss by revealing its particular framing in the novels of his later work. I shall analyze the contexts that connect youth to vitality and survival, revisiting some key moments in the long imaginary biographies of his notorious characters David Kepesh and Nathan Zuckerman. Although central in Roth’s work, youth has been commonly investigated in connection to allegories that anchor the writer’s oeuvre in a territory marked by nostalgia, loss, and a sense of impending vital exhaustion. My aim is to isolate this issue more clearly and focus on its specificity rather than its connectivity.

Article Details

How to Cite
Glăvan, G. “The Fantasy of Youth in Philip Roth’s Later Novels”. Linguaculture, vol. 11, no. 2, Dec. 2020, pp. 145-54, doi:10.47743/lincu-2020-2-0179.
Issue
Vol. 11 No. 2 (2020)
Section
Articles
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Gabriela Glăvan, West University of Timișoara, Romania

Gabriela Glăvan teaches Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology, West University of Timișoara. She has published a book on the radical modernist authors of the Romanian interwar period, a book on Franz Kafka’s best known short stories and numerous papers in relevant journals focusing on the imagination of childhood and premature death, on children’s literature and post-communist nostalgia.

References

Harrison, Kathryn. Rev. of The Humbling, by Philip Roth. New York Times Review of Books, November 11, 2009. Web.

Hayes, Patrick. Philip Roth, Fiction and Power. Oxford University Press. 2014. Print.

Hoobs, Alex, Aging Masculinity in the American Novel. Rowman and Littlefield. 2016. Print.

Pozorski, Aimee. “Confronting the “C” Word: Cancer and Death in Philip Roth’s Fiction.” Philip Roth Studies. 11. 1 (Spring 2015): 105-123.

Roth Zoë. “Against Representation: Death, Desire, and Art in Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal.” Philip Roth Studies, 8. 1. (Spring 2012): 95-100. Print.

Roth, Philip, Everyman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.

___. Philip, Exit Ghost. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.

___. The Humbling. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009. Print.

Safer, Elaine B. “Philip Roth’s The Humbling: Loneliness and Mortality in the Later Work.” Studies in American Jewish Literature, vol. 30, 2011. 40-46. Print.

Sidelsky, William. Rev. of The Humbling by Philip Roth, The Observer, October 25, 2009. Web.

Trendel, Aristie. “Master and Pupil in Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal.” Philip Roth Studies 3.1 (2007): 56-65. Print.