The Reinvention of Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex

In his second novel, Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides is deep in the Greeks. If Melville in Moby Dick sets up an anthology of whaling, Eugenides builds his collection of Greekness. It may be because the Greeks found a mythical way out of the contradictions and the ambiguities that characterize the fragm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean journal of American studies Vol. 6; no. 2
Main Author Trendel, Aristi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London European Association for American Studies 04.04.2011
The European Association for American Studies (EAAS)
Subjects
Assimilation
Culture
Ethnicity
Eugenides, Jeffrey
Families & family life
Gender
Generations
Grandparents
Greek civilization
Greek-American literature
Hermaphroditus
identity
integration
multiculturalism
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Novels
Writers
Asia Minor
Hermaphroditus
multigenerational
public ethnic
gender
second generation
rooted cosmopolitan
Bildungsroman
multiculturalism
third generation
assimilation
Ethnicity
symbolic ethnic
Hansen’s law
immigrant novel
transsexual
identity
integration
continuity-discontinuity
politics of descent
ethnic novel
Greek-American literature
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Summary:In his second novel, Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides is deep in the Greeks. If Melville in Moby Dick sets up an anthology of whaling, Eugenides builds his collection of Greekness. It may be because the Greeks found a mythical way out of the contradictions and the ambiguities that characterize the fragmented human being in search of unity through Hermaphroditus, the figure of an indivisible duality, quite appropriate to express the diverse reality of American unity. The Pulitzer-prized writer rev...
ISSN:1991-9336
1991-9336
DOI:10.4000/ejas.9036