Beschreibung:
"This groundbreaking collection captures the state of present day popular fiction. It features 20 new essays on key authors associated with a wide range of genres and sub-genres, providing chapter-length discussions of major post-2000 works of contemporary popular fiction."--book cover
Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction represents an invaluable starting point for students wishing to familiarise themselves with this exciting and rapidly evolving area of literary studies. It provides an accessible, concise and reliable overview of core critical terminology, key theoretical approaches, and the major genres and sub-genres within popular fiction. Because popular fiction is significantly shaped by commercial forces, the book also provides critical and historical contexts for terminology related to e-books, e-publishing, and self-publishing platforms. By using focusing in particular on post-2000 trends in popular fiction, the book provides a truly up-to-date snapshot of the subject area and its critical contexts
Introduction: 'Changing the story', popular fiction today / Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson -- Larry McMurtry's vanishing breeds / Stephen Matterson -- 'Time to open the door': Stephen King's legacy / Rebecca Janicker -- Terry Pratchett: mostly human / Jim Shanahan -- From Westeros to HBO: George R.R. Martin and the mainstreaming of fantasy / Gerard Hynes -- Nora Roberts: the power of love / Jarlath Killeen -- The king of stories: Neil Gaiman's twenty-first century fiction / Tara Prescott -- Jo Nesbo: murder in the Folkhemmet / Clare Clarke -- 'It's a trap! Don't turn the page': metafiction and the multiverse in the comics of Grant Morrison / Kate Roddy -- Panoptic and synoptic surveillance in Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games series / Keith O'Sullivan -- E.L. James and the Fifty Shades phenomenon / Dara Downey -- Fact, fiction, fabrication: the popular appeal of Dan Brown's global bestsellers / Ian Kinane -- 'I need to disillusion you': J.K. Rowling and twenty-first century young adult fantasy / Kate Harvey -- Jodi Picoult: good grief / Clare Hayes-Brady -- 'We will have a happy marriage if it kills him": Gillian Flynn and the rise of domestic noir / Bernice M. Murphy -- 'The Bastard Zone': China Mieville, Perdido Street Station and the new weird / Kirsten Tranter -- Sparkly Vampires and shimmering aliens: the paranormal romance of Stephenie Meyer / Hannah Priest -- 'We needed to get a lot of white collars dirty': Apocalypse as opportunity in Max Brooks's World War Z / Bernice M. Murphy -- Genre and uncertainty in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad mysteries / Brian Cliff -- 'You get what you ask for': Hugh Howey, science fiction and authorial agency / Stephen Kenneally -- Cherie Priest: at the intersection of history and technology / Catherine Siemann