Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Smiley, Jane - James A. Schiff (essay date Summer 1998)

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James A. Schiff (essay date Summer 1998)

SOURCE: “Contemporary Retellings: A Thousand Acres as the Latest Lear,” in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 39, No. 4, Summer, 1998, pp. 367–81.

[In the following essay, Schiff discusses Smiley's rewriting of King Lear in A Thousand Acres.]

In this century, and particularly since Joyce's Ulysses, numerous novels and poems have attempted to retell earlier stories, myths, and fairy tales. Between 1920 and 1980, writers such as Yeats, Lawrence, Faulkner, Mann, Hermann Hesse, Max Frisch, Anthony Burgess, John Barth, Bernard Malamud, Jean Rhys, John Gardner, Donald Barthelme, Anne Sexton, John Updike, and Angela Carter have employed the “mythical method,” a term for literature that explicitly attempts to retell earlier stories that have achieved mythic significance. Although none of those writers has equaled the success and achievement of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Melissa Pressley (review date 7 September 1988)
   2. Jane S. Bakerman (essay date 1988)
   3. Suzanne MacLachlan (review date 30 October 1989)
   4. Richard Eder (review date 10 November 1991)
   5. Rupert Christiansen (review date 10 October 1992)
   6. Jane S. Bakerman (essay date 1992)
   7. Margaret Forster (review date 30 April 1994)
   8. Margaret Rozga (essay date 1994)
   9. Tim Keppel (essay date 1995)
   10. Merle Rubin (review date 4 April 1995)
   11. Claire Messud (review date 19 May 1995)
   12. Michael Carlson (review date 27 May 1995)
   13. Laurie Taylor (review date 9 June 1995)
   14. Emily Toth (review date Winter 1996)
   15. Mary Paniccia Carden (essay date 1997)
   16. Ron Charles (review date 26 March 1998)
   17. Heller McAlpin (review date 5 April 1998)
   18. James A. Schiff (essay date Summer 1998)
   19. Dale M. Bauer (review date July 1998)
   20. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 25 September 1998)
   21. Catherine Cowen Olson (essay date Autumn 1998)
   22. Katie Grant (review date 24 October 1998)
   23. Barbara Mathieson (essay date 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright