A study on John Updike's non-fiction: political reading about his essays published at the journal The New Yorker

• Grant number: 17/23883-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: August 01, 2018
• End date: November 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Carla Alexandra Ferreira
• Grantee: Carla Alexandra Ferreira
• Host Investigator: Donald J. Greiner
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of South Carolina, United States

Abstract

In an attempt to broaden the investigation started in my doctoral dissertation, the objective of this research is to examine some of John Updike's essays for The New Yorker, an American respectable magazine, to which he contributed poetry, fiction, essays and criticism through his career as a fictionist since the 1950s, to verify whether this specific Updike's nonfiction contains the author's main concerns about his country such as patriotism, sex, religion, politics, social and racial inclusion and globalization present in his fictional work. On the whole, the aim is to investigate whether John Updike's views on his nation - and on his nation in relation to other countries - are also artistically present in his essays from 1960's to 1970's and the 2000's issues of the magazine. It will be assumed that Updike's oeuvre figured some North-American issues present in the political unconscious of that society which are, in their turn, for his fiction, enveloped in the 'strategies of containment' (JAMESON, 1992) that move readers and critics' views towards the aspect of representability. Among his nonfiction, the essay was chosen since it is a genre that approaches the literary and criticism at the same time. This reading will be done in the three-level or horizons of interpretation for the "semantic enrichment" of the essays. (AU)