Old Left, New Left, and post-Marxist history: Political transition and forms of the American novel, 1960--1990

The dissertation analyzes how the forms of the American novel negotiate the shift in political values from the Old Left to the New Left and to the current dominance of cultural studies. Though the transition from the class-based structure of the Old Left to the more diffused model of cultural studies has been theorized in a critical format, no studies exist of how this allocation has been narrated through the novel form. The project explores the alterations in the novel genre when it articulates a political history which has evacuated the concept of class as the sole perspective for political organization. By drawing on recent work in literary studies, American history, political philosophy, and historiography I examine the relationships between the novel form, political economy, narrative, and history. The study mediates in the areas of American literature and novel theory by exploring the viability of a potent narrative in a social space that has moved away from solely class-based models and now demands multiple affiliations from the political subject.