Theory of the Novel


Book Description

The novel is the most important form of Western art. It aims to represent the totality of life; it is the flagship that literature sends out against the systematic thought of science and philosophy. Indebted to Lukács and Bakhtin, to Auerbach and Ian Watt, Guido Mazzoni’s Theory of the Novel breaks new ground, building a historical understanding of how the novel became the modern book of life: one of the best representations of our experience of the world. The genre arose during a long metamorphosis of narrative forms that took place between 1550 and 1800. By the nineteenth century it had come to encompass a corpus of texts distinguished by their freedom from traditional formal boundaries and by the particularity of their narratives. Mazzoni explains that modern novels consist of stories told in any way whatsoever, by narrators who exist—like us—as contingent beings within time and space. They therefore present an interpretation, not a copy, of the world. Novels grant new importance to the stories of ordinary men and women and allow readers to step into other lives and other versions of truth. As Theory of the Novel makes clear, this art form narrates an epoch and a society in which individual experiences do not converge but proliferate, in which the common world has fragmented into a plurality of small, local worlds, each absolute in its particularity.




A Theory of the Classical Novel


Book Description

First published in 1969, this book asserts that two concepts, structure and praxis, make it impractical for scholars to ignore the necessity of a theory of the novel — with the term ‘classical novel’ used to cover western fiction. The author argues that the novel is fundamentally an ‘enterprise’ — an aspect of the praxis of a particular social class — and that the ways of orthodox scholarship are also a praxis. The investigator must enquire into the nature of their questions as those traditionally put to literature are inspired by ‘irrelevant’ nineteenth century positivism. In the author’s view the book is necessarily a theory of the classical novel and a manifesto for the student movement.




The Cambridge Companion to Balzac


Book Description

One of the founders of literary realism and the serial novel, Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a prolific writer who produced more than a hundred novels, plays and short stories during his career. With its dramatic plots and memorable characters, Balzac's fiction has enthralled generations of readers. 'La Comédie humaine', the vast collection of works in which he strove to document every aspect of nineteenth-century French society, has influenced writers from Flaubert, Zola and Proust to Dostoevsky and Oscar Wilde. This Companion provides a critical reappraisal of Balzac, combining studies of his major novels with guidance on the key narrative and thematic features of his writing. Twelve chapters by world-leading specialists encompass a wide spectrum of topics such as the representation of history, philosophy and religion, the plight of the struggling artist, gender and sexuality, and Balzac's depiction of the creative process itself.




Theory of the Novel


Book Description

McKeon and others delve into the significance of the novel as a genre form, issues in novel techniques such as displacement, the grand theory, narrative modes such as subjectivity, character, and development, critical interpretation of the structure of the novel, and the novel in historical context.







The Myth and Identity of the Romantic Artist in European Literature


Book Description

This study addresses the question of artistic identity and the myth of the artist as it has been shaped by the artists themselves. While the term artist is to be understood in a broad sense, the focus of this study is the literature of the Romantic tradition. Identity is largely perceived as a construct, and a central hypothesis of this book concerns its aesthetic value and the ways it creates dominant narratives of self-perception that produce powerful myths. The construction of the artist’s identity, be it collective or personal, rests on a series of aesthetic praxes. Caught between the mythic idealisation of poetic genius and its social devaluation, the Romantic artist seeks to create a place for himself, and in doing so, he engages in his own mythmaking. This process is studied in an interdisciplinary perspective, approaching texts and writers from different traditions. The study analyses various typologies of the artist, numerous mythmaking strategies as well as several postural techniques; all of which have sketched major direct or indirect fictional self-portraits in the European tradition.




How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read


Book Description

In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.




Balzac's Lives


Book Description

Enter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way. Balzac, more than anyone, invented the nineteenth-century novel, and Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac had invented the nineteenth century. But it was above all through the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters that Balzac dreamed up and made flesh—entrepreneurs, bankers, inventors, industrialists, poets, artists, bohemians of both sexes, journalists, aristocrats, politicians, prostitutes—that he brought to life the dynamic forces of an era that ushered in our own. Peter Brooks’s Balzac’s Lives is a vivid and searching portrait of a great novelist as revealed through the fictional lives he imagined.




The Encyclopedia of the Novel


Book Description

Now available in a single volume paperback, this advanced reference resource for the novel and novel theory offers authoritative accounts of the history, terminology, and genre of the novel, in over 140 articles of 500-7,000 words. Entries explore the history and tradition of the novel in different areas of the world; formal elements of the novel (story, plot, character, narrator); technical aspects of the genre (such as realism, narrative structure and style); subgenres, including the bildungsroman and the graphic novel; theoretical problems, such as definitions of the novel; book history; and the novel's relationship to other arts and disciplines. The Encyclopedia is arranged in A-Z format and features entries from an international cast of over 140 scholars, overseen by an advisory board of 37 leading specialists in the field, making this the most authoritative reference resource available on the novel. This essential reference, now available in an easy-to-use, fully indexed single volume paperback, will be a vital addition to the libraries of literature students and scholars everywhere.




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