Postwar Academic Fiction: Satire, Ethics, Community

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As a literary genre, academic fiction has emerged in recent years as one of the most popular modes for satirizing the cultural conflicts and sociological nuances inherent in campus life. Drawing upon recent insights in ethical criticism and moral philosophy, Postwar Academic Fiction: Satire, Ethics, Community offers new readings of fictional and nonfictional works by such figures as Kingsley Amis, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, David Lodge, David Mamet, Ishmael Reed, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, and Jane Smiley.

“This book (and the satires it discusses) might be instructive to university faculty, who often take themselves too seriously.”—J.C. Kohl, Choice

“For Womack, the campus novel typically functions as a satirical exposé of the unscrupulous individualism that corrupts the modern university’s collective pursuit of wisdom, truth, and knowledge. . . . Postwar Academic Fiction provides a useful introductory overview, a careful and sympathetic restatement of the ethical and professional dilemmas negotiated by the fictional intelligentsia.”—Michael Greaney, The Yearbook of English Studies