Reading for Quiet in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Novels

Abstract

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Marilynne Robinson

“…Second, while her 'quiet' narrative aesthetic corresponds to one current novelistic trend, it is entirely at odds with another tendency that represents noise as the governing motif of contemporary US experience. (Sykes, 2014) This means that though her novels are contemporary, they do not seem to belong to the dominant zeitgeist. Finally, and most importantly to what will follow, her fiction draws upon a literary genealogy that includes key nineteenthcentury forbears.…”