Theory of the Novel
A Historical Approach
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press
Published:26th Jan '01
Should be back in stock very soon
A major collection of essays on the novel
All the selections in this anthology date from the twentieth century-most from the last forty years-and represent the attempts of different theorists, and different theoretical schools, to describe the historical stages of the genre's formal development.Michael McKeon, author of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, here assembles a collection of influential essays on the theory of the novel. Carefully chosen selections from Frye, Benjamin, Levi-Strauss, Lukacs, Bakhtin, and other prominent theorists explore the historical significance of the novel as a genre, from its early beginnings to its modern variations in the postmodern novel and postcolonial novel. Offering a generous selection of key theoretical texts for students and scholars alike, Theory of the Novel also presents a provocative argument for studying the genre. In his introduction to the volume and in headnotes to each section, McKeon argues that genre theory and history provide the best approach to understanding the novel. All the selections in this anthology date from the twentieth century-most from the last forty years-and represent the attempts of different theorists, and different theoretical schools, to describe the historical stages of the genre's formal development.
McKeon's dissections are often breathtaking... [his] anthology is solid, commandingly centered,... superbly energetic and uniquely powerful. -- Marshall Brown Eighteenth-Century Fiction As comprehensive an account of the genre as you could wish. What a marvelous collection and what a skillful editor McKeon is, marshalling the essays into an argument for the novel as a distinct 'literary historical genre' rather than as one element in a bland, all-embracing narrative theory... The outstanding feature of this fine collection is its firm commitment to the art of the novelist. Throughout, there is a profound recognition of the novel's ability to criticise the existing order, to create new and compelling worlds, to extend our grammar and enlarge our vocabulary for coping with the great dramas of life, love, death and the shoelace snapping when you are late for work. -- Gary Day Times Higher Education Supplement The anthology provides not only a splendid guide to thinking about the novel, but also a useful warning against assuming that fiction is merely the instrument of those who wish to dampen revolution, forge national identities, and build empires. -- Jonathan Lamb Studies in English Literature This breathtaking comprehensive collection of essays... is an amazingly ambitious project... McKeon has provided us with an invaluable map of the theoretical and literary-historical landscape surrounding the origins, theories, and developments of the novel. -- Ansgar Nunning Giesen LWU This is a richly stimulating volume, an invaluable resource and challenging intervention for all serious researchers into the novel. This Year's Work in English Studies As a teaching text this anthology can hardly be bettered. -- David Walker British Journal for 18th-Century Studies
ISBN: 9780801863974
Dimensions: 254mm x 165mm x 41mm
Weight: 1542g
968 pages