Create a 11 page essay paper that discusses Research for Midwestern Literature.Download file to see previous pages... One of her best novels was the novel titled “A Thousand Acres.” This is a nove

Create a 11 page essay paper that discusses Research for Midwestern Literature.

One of her best novels was the novel titled “A Thousand Acres.” This is a novel that is actually a response to King Leah by Shakespeare. It is interesting to see how the author recreates the plot but in a totally different setting, with a totally different story, using totally different characters, but still maintaining the same plot that Shakespeare used in King Leah. By and Large, Smiley chooses to use the setting of the American Midwest in the late 70s and that makes her novel more readable to the contemporary audience as opposed to Shakespeare’s King Leah. This paper will look at how Jane Smiley shapes conversations about the Midwestern literature. Even though she has written a number of novels, short stories and other types of literature, this paper will concentrate on her novel, A Thousand Acres which won the Pulitzer Prize. About Jane Smiley Jane Smiley is a famous American novelist that was born on the 26th of September 1949 in California, LA. She was however brought up in Webster Groves which is relatively a small city on the suburbs of St. Louis. She also went to school in the same region graduating with a high school diploma from John Burroughs School and later an AB in literature, a Masters degree, and a PHD from Vassar College in 1971, the university of Iowa in 1981 and university of Iowa in 1976 respectively. Her first book to be published was the novel Barn Blind which was published in 1980. However, the novel that put her in the limelight washer best selling novel- A Thousand Acres. This is a story that is centered on William Shakespeare’s King Lear and the book got the Pulitzer fiction award in the year 1992. However, that was not her first award to get thanks to her writing. Her short story “Lily” had already earned the O. Henry Award in the year 1985. A Thousand Acres was her first novel to be made into a film and she in fact wrote the script herself. Later on, her other novel- The Age of Grief- was also made into a film in the year 2002. The influence that Jane Smiley has had on the Midwestern literature can not be bargained. For instance, in the year 2001 she was voted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters. This is an organization that brings together 250 different brains from the arts fields with a main aim of fostering excellence in music, literature, and different forms of art in contemporary America she is also a participant of the yearly LA festival of books. In addition to all these, she also sits on the panel of the renowned Man Booker international prize and she in fact was the chair in 2009. A Thousand Acres All writers get some inspiration from past authors. One of the commonest forms of writings that were witnessed in the last decades in the twentieth century was rewrites of a number of the canonical works. There has been plenty of counter writing of Shakespeare’s works and arguably, Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is just one of the best (Moraru 201). It is no secret that A Thousand Acres is a response to Shakespeare’s King Lear. Smiley ideally transfers the plot of King Leah into the American Midwest in the 1970s and then changes the narrative position into that of a woman.