Adolescence America And Postwar Fiction

Arguing that metaphor and the figurative are central to constructions and narrations of adolescence in America, this book uses a wide array of fictional and critical work, including texts by Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides, to provide original and provocative new readings of adolescence.

Review: 'Heretofore, the study of literary representations of the coming-of-age process has always been a little like adolescence itself: somewhat confused and without direction. Adolescence, America and Postwar Fiction goes a long way towards breaking past the mythologies of youth by interrogating their metaphorical bases.

Theoretically sophisticated and compelling in its close readings, McLennan's book moves our understanding of literary adolescence into its own maturity.' - Professor Kirk Curnutt, Troy State University Montgomery, author of Alienated-Youth Fiction