Aesthetics of Expression in Thomas Wolfe’s Select Novels
Author : Dr. Basavana Gowda OG
Abstract :
Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929) and Of Time and the River (1935) together form a continuous autobiographical epic that redefines narrative realism in American modernist fiction. This paper examines Wolfe’s stylistic system across both novels through three interdependent dimensions: accurate dialogue, realistic description, and poetic rhetoric. It argues that Wolfe constructs a unified literary mode in which dialogue functions as social documentation, description becomes sensory reconstruction shaped by memory, and rhetoric transforms narrative into philosophical meditation on time, identity, and existential displacement. While Look Homeward, Angel establishes the foundational structure of Wolfe’s aesthetic, Of Time and the River expands it spatially and temporally, shifting from localized Southern memory to a broader national and cosmological consciousness.
Keywords :
Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, Of Time and the River, American Modernism, Autobiographical Fiction etc.
