My Heart Laid Bare (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Joyce Carol Oates
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1891 to the early 1930’s
- Setting: The United States
- Principal Characters: Abraham Licht, Thurston Licht, Harwood Licht, Darian Licht, Esther Licht, Elisha Licht, Millicent Licht, Katrina
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life, Parents and children, Music or musicians, Social issues, Marriage, Religion, Fathers, Eccentrics or eccentricities, Fraud
- Locales: United States
Joyce Carol Oates prefaces her novel with a quotation from Edgar Allan Poe:
If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own. . . . All that he has to do is write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple—a few plain words—“My Heart Laid Bare.” But this little book must be true to its title. . . . No man could write it, even if he dared.
What Poe must have had in mind was something quite different from what Oates...
[The entire page is 2080 words long]
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