A thing made of words : the reflexive realism of Richard Yates

This thesis is a study of the work of American novelist and short story writer Richard Yates. Taking as its starting point the consensus view of Richard Yates as a realist operating during a period of strong anti-realist currents in American literature, the thesis seeks to complicate this notion, arguing instead for a reading of Richard Yates' work as a mode of realism that could only have emerged after modernism, a realism that focussed on a number of concerns and problems regarding representation and interpretation shared with literary postmodernism, and which anticipates recent and current trends within American literary fiction. Its main areas of investigation are Yates' take on everyday language as a site of entropy; his use of intertextuality, in particular in relation to the short story; tensions between realism's claim to cognitive/visual authority and epistemological uncertainty; concerns and anxieties around masculinity within American realism; his use of autobiographical material in relation to the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott; the impact of media saturation on subjectivity, with particular focus on cliché.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo