Ralph Clare, an associate professor in the Department of English, published the essay, Metaffective Fiction: Structuring Feeling in Contemporary American Literature, in the collection “After Postmodernism: The New American Fiction” (Routledge, 2020).
The essay explores the role of affect in Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 novel “Pale Fire” and Doug Dorst and J.J Abram’s 2013 novel “S.” and argues that contemporary fiction heralds a unique, self-aware treatment of affect and emotion that is distinct from that of its postmodern predecessor.