John Updike, Roger's Version

M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo (Universidad Isabel I)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1986

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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In the second instalment of his “

The Scarlet Letter

Trilogy” after

A Month of Sundays

(1985), John Updike sought in

Roger’s Version

(1986 [2006]) to give voice to Roger Chillingworth, the learned and cuckolded husband of the bearer of the scarlet A, Hester Prynne. The Roger of the title is Roger Lambert, an alter ego for Roger Chillingworth, with whom he shares his first name. Roger Lambert is a professor in a city that could well be Boston (in the novel it is identified as an unnamed Northeastern city); moreover, it has been pointed out that Roger’s college could be Harvard Divinity School. To further stress the Puritan resonance of the novel and its particular setting, his son attends Pilgrim School. Touches of Puritanism can be perceived in several other instances in the novel,…

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1601 words

Citation: Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "Roger's Version". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 November 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12961, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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