Fictional Americas At War

The book deals with significant manifestations of war discourse in 20th century American literature, as well as important shifts and developments in the discursive constructions of war. These manifestations are novels that tackle in special ways the reality of warfare from World War I to the Vietnam War. They will be naturally placed here within their cultural, historical and political context, with which they interact, and from which they gain relevance and meaning. The novels that come under scrutiny are Ernest Hemingway¿s A Farewell to Arms, Norman Mailer¿s The Naked and the Dead, Joseph Heller¿s Catch-22 and Kurt Vonnegut¿s Slaughterhouse-Five. The four novels are milestones in American war fiction and cultural phenomena in their own right.