Literary Precedents for Fear of Flying

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Fear of Flying.

Literary Precedents for Fear of Flying

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Fear of Flying.
This section contains 178 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy the Fear of Flying Short Guide

Jong specialized in eighteenth-century literature when she was working towards a doctoral degree at Columbia University, and the most obvious precedent for the book's structure and tone — including the bawdy humor that simultaneously exposes and defends against serious and unpleasant realities — is to be found in such books as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. Among more recent novels, critics often called Fear of Flying a female version of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) or compared it to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

A number of novels with similar themes were published at almost the same time as Fear of Flying, including Sue Kaufman's, The Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967), Dorothy Bryant's, Ella Price's Journal (1972), Anne Roiphe's, Up the Sandbox (1972), and Marge Piercy's Small Changes (1973). All dealt, at least in part, with the search for selfdiscovery by a woman already married and supposedly "happy...

(read more)

This section contains 178 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy the Fear of Flying Short Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Fear of Flying from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.