A Radical Bridge: An Examination of the New Nonfiction and Psychohistory

FAIN: FT-13558-77

John Lennon
University of South Florida (Tampa, FL 33620-9951)

To investigate the recent shift in the perspective and content of narrative literature and history. Due to the hermeticism of the modern novel and to history's loss of faith, writers of both fields have been searching for new ways in which the narrative artist can mediate between the self (the "intensive totality") and the world (the "extensive totality"). PI believes that the new nonfiction (Mailer, Capote, etc.) and psychohistory (Erikson, Mazlish, etc.) derive from similar impetus and will examine these similarities and their implications.