Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rother, Matthew P.
Language:English
Published: Cleveland State University / OhioLINK 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1336091928
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spelling ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-csu13360919282021-08-03T05:35:19Z Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family Rother, Matthew P. Literature James Agee Original and Restored Versions of A Death in the Family James Agee's A Death in the Family, the semiautobiographical book chronicling the death of a young boy's father in 1916, was published postumously in 1957, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Literature the following year. The book was nearly complete at the time of the author's death in 1955, and for nearly half a century editor David McDowell's version of the book was the accepted one. Throughout the intervening years, critics took note of the myriad shortcomings of this edition. Mcdowell's edition utilizes a previously published sketch, "Knoxville: Summer 1915," as the prologue and presents events out of sequence in a truncated form reliant upon earlier versions of the manuscript. Written clues left by Agee clearly indicate this is not what he intended, and in 2007, Michael A. Lofaro, after several years of extensive effort, published the expanded and chronologically ordered version of A Death in the Family utilizing a piece entitled "Dream Sequence" as its prologue. This version of the text is much more in line with Agee's desires for his book and remedies issues of cohesion and thematic/character development problematic in the earlier text. A Death in the Family is the culmination of James Agee's writings, much of which dealt with the death of his father, and although subjective in nature, is the most effective in assisting Agee in coming to terms with his loss and providing a lasting memorial to his father. 2012-05-08 English text Cleveland State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1336091928 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1336091928 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
collection NDLTD
language English
sources NDLTD
topic Literature
James Agee
Original and Restored Versions of A Death in the Family
spellingShingle Literature
James Agee
Original and Restored Versions of A Death in the Family
Rother, Matthew P.
Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family
author Rother, Matthew P.
author_facet Rother, Matthew P.
author_sort Rother, Matthew P.
title Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family
title_short Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family
title_full Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family
title_fullStr Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family
title_full_unstemmed Restoring James Agee: A Textual Analysis of the Original and Restored Versions of James Agee's A Death in the Family
title_sort restoring james agee: a textual analysis of the original and restored versions of james agee's a death in the family
publisher Cleveland State University / OhioLINK
publishDate 2012
url http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1336091928
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