"There's Always More to a Story Than a Body Can See from a Fence Line": Philip Roth and Barbara Kingsolver

Abstract

ABSTRACT:In Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000) and Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer (2000), concepts of insider and outsider, purity and pollution, are fundamental to both action and narrative structure, specifically in relation to Mary Douglas's analysis of classificatory systems in Purity and Danger (1966). Reading these novels in relation to Douglas's work reveals that both writers displace the reader from a position of dominance and allow the story to move across textual fields into uncharted areas, redrawing previously firm literary or narrative boundaries.