Grego, AlessandraRussell, ShannonAntinori, Jacopo Olmo2024-09-242024-09-242020Antinori, Jacopo Olmo. "Impoverished and Threatened: The Erosion of the Middle Class and the Novel of the 21st Century". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2020.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14490/306Thesis (B.A. in English Literature, Minors in Creative Writing and Communications)--John Cabot University, Spring 2020.This thesis focuses on contemporary novelistic representations of the growing anxiety of the Western middle class in relation to the economic and social crises experienced by this social group in the first two decades of the 21st century. Through a post-Marxist approach, and with the help of tools drawn from economic theory, the first part of the thesis unveils the various ways in which the so-called ‘erosion’ of the middle class is represented in four contemporary novels—The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, NW by Zadie Smith, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers, and Normal People by Sally Rooney. The final part, instead, is entirely dedicated to issues of form. First, a direct relationship between the middle class and the literary form of the novel is established. Then, the author discusses the various formal choices made by the authors of the novels with the aim to discern which stylistic approach is most suited to the expression of the collective consciousness of the middle class in the 21st century. Eventually, Normal People is recognized as the more innovative and qualified work of the group, and it is suggested that Rooney’s book may provide a model for the development of the genre in the remainder of the century.vi, 94 pagesenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Middle class in literatureThesis