Beginning its life as the sensational entertainment of the eighteenth century, the novel has become the major literary genre of modern times. Drawing on hundreds of examples of famous novels from all over the world, Marina MacKay explores the essential aspects of the novel and its history: where novels came from and why we read them; how we think about their styles and techniques, their people, plots, places, and politics. Between the main chapters are longer readings of individual works, from Don Quixote to Midnight's Children. A glossary of key terms and a guide to further reading are included, making this an ideal accompaniment to introductory courses on the novel.
Beginning its life as the sensational entertainment of the eighteenth century, the novel has become the major literary genre of modern times. Drawing on hundreds of examples of famous novels from all over the world, Marina MacKay explores the essential aspects of the novel and its history: where novels came from and why we read them; how we think about their styles and techniques, their people, plots, places, and politics. Between the main chapters are longer readings of individual works, from Don Quixote to Midnight's Children. A glossary of key terms and a guide to further reading are included, making this an ideal accompaniment to introductory courses on the novel.
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Book Description
Drawing on hundreds of examples of famous novels from all over the world, Marina MacKay explores the essential aspects of the novel and its history. A glossary of key terms and a guide to further reading are included, making this an ideal accompaniment to introductory courses on the novel.
About the Author
Marina MacKay is Associate Professor of English at Washington University, St Louis.
Tags: European, General, Literary Criticism, Semiotics & Theory, English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh
Author(s): Marina MacKay
Series: Cambridge Introductions to Literature
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2010
Language: English
Tags: European, General, Literary Criticism, Semiotics & Theory, English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
About this book
Chapter 1 Why the novel matters
Passions awakened: the dangers of fiction
Women and the novel
The novel becomes an “art”
Novelistic realisms and realities
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605, 1615)
Chapter 2 Origins of the novel
Dates and definitions
The (eighteenth-century) rise of the novel
But is it a novel?
Origins in the novel
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67)
Chapter 3 Narrating the novel
Omniscient narration
Focalization and free indirect discourse
Interior monologue and stream of consciousness
First-person narration and the problem of reliability
Stories within stories and other composite fictions
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Chapter 4 Character and the novel
Constructing and construing character
Flat/round, major/minor, transparent/opaque
Character as text
Character as function and person
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Chapter 5 Plotting the novel
Suspense, interruption, and delay
Consequentiality and meaning
Connectivity and social order
Plots and masterplots
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857)
Chapter 6 Setting the novel
Improving your estate
The monster at the margins
Land, sea, and labor
Cityscapes
Nowhere and everywhere
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
Chapter 7 Time and history
History and story
Transformations of time in the modern novel
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
Chapter 8 Genre and subgenre
Genre fiction/literary fiction
Literary value and its arbiters
Genre fiction as cultural text
Originality and expectations
Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
Chapter 9 Novel and anti-novel
Magical realism
The rise of metafiction
Writing and rewriting
Postmodernism, politics, history
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
Chapter 10 Novel, nation, community
Representing the part and the whole
E pluribus unum: the nation-making novel
Multiculturalism and the languages of fiction
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)
Chapter 11 Concluding
Apocalyptic thinking
Open endings
Closure and anti-closure
Ongoingness
Notes
1 Why the novel matters
Interchapter: Don Quixote
2 Origins of the novel
Interchapter: Tristram Shandy
3 Narrating the novel
Interchapter: Justified Sinner
4 Character and the novel
Interchapter: The Scarlet Letter
5 Plotting the novel
Interchapter: Madame Bovary
6 Setting the novel
Interchapter: Bleak House
7 Time and history
Interchapter: To the Lighthouse
8 Genre and subgenre
Interchapter: The Ministry of fear
9 Novel and anti-novel
Interchapter: The Crying of Lot 49
10 Novel, nation, community
Interchapter: Midnight’s Children
11 Concluding
Glossary
Further reading
Anthologies of criticism and theory
1 Why the novel matters
2 Origins of the novel
3 Narrating the novel
4 Character and the novel
5 Plotting the novel
6 Setting the novel
7 Time and history
8 Genre and subgenre
9 Novel and anti-novel
10 Novel, nation, community
11 Concluding
Index
