{"title":"War's Implications: Missionaries and the Global War Novel","authors":"Brian J. Williams","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2024.a921060","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This article argues that US war literature hinges on nationalistic, exclusionary narratives that are inadequate for the complexities of globalized warfare. Drawing on theories of the global novel, with its focus on individual action within complex systems, this piece considers Phil Klay’s <i>Missionaries</i> as a global war novel that foregrounds how an embrace of chaos and contingency enables new ideas of responsibility and destabilizes the categories “combatant” and “war story.” Klay forces a confrontation with individual and shared culpability, conceptualizing war as a process of implication, laying the groundwork for ethical local action within global systems.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2024.a921060","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:
This article argues that US war literature hinges on nationalistic, exclusionary narratives that are inadequate for the complexities of globalized warfare. Drawing on theories of the global novel, with its focus on individual action within complex systems, this piece considers Phil Klay’s Missionaries as a global war novel that foregrounds how an embrace of chaos and contingency enables new ideas of responsibility and destabilizes the categories “combatant” and “war story.” Klay forces a confrontation with individual and shared culpability, conceptualizing war as a process of implication, laying the groundwork for ethical local action within global systems.
期刊介绍：
From its inception, Studies in the Novel has been dedicated to building a scholarly community around the world-making potentialities of the novel. Studies in the Novel started as an idea among several members of the English Department of the University of North Texas during the summer of 1965. They determined that there was a need for a journal “devoted to publishing critical and scholarly articles on the novel with no restrictions on either chronology or nationality of the novelists studied.” The founding editor, University of North Texas professor of contemporary literature James W. Lee, envisioned a journal of international scope and influence. Since then, Studies in the Novel has staked its reputation upon publishing incisive scholarship on the canon-forming and cutting-edge novelists that have shaped the genre’s rich history. The journal continues to break new ground by promoting new theoretical approaches, a broader international scope, and an engagement with the contemporary novel as a form of social critique.
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