The novel : an alternative history
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The novel : an alternative history
Continuum, c2010-
- Beginnings to 1600 : hardcover
- 1600-1800 : hardcover
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Publisher of 1600-1800: Bloomsbury Academic
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
Beginnings to 1600 : hardcover ISBN 9781441177049
Description
This is a comprehensive history - and controversial reappraisal - of the world's most popular and innovative literary form. Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, "The Novel: An Alternative History" is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the premodern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; and even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these premodern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny.
Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining - "The Novel: An Alternative History" is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: The Novel Novel
- Chapter 1: The Ancient Novel
- Egyptian
- Mesopotamian
- Hebrew
- Greek
- Roman
- Christian
- Chapter 2: The Medieval Novel
- Irish
- Icelandic
- Byzantine
- Jewish
- Arthurian
- Chapter 3: The Renaissance Novel
- Italian
- Spanish
- French
- English
- Bridge: The Mesoamerican Novel
- Chapter 4: The Eastern Novel
- Indian
- Tibetan
- Arabic
- Persian
- Chapter 5: The Far Eastern Novel
- Japanese
- Chinese
- Bibliography
- Chronological Index of Novels Discussed
- General Index.
- Volume
-
1600-1800 : hardcover ISBN 9781441188694
Description
Winner of the Christian Gauss Award for excellence in literary scholarship from the Phi Beta Kappa Society
Having excavated the world's earliest novels in his previous book, literary historian Steven Moore explores in this sequel the remarkable flowering of the novel between the years 1600 and 1800-from Don Quixote to America's first big novel, an homage to Cervantes entitled Modern Chivalry. This is the period of such classic novels as Tom Jones, Candide, and Dangerous Liaisons, but beyond the dozen or so recognized classics there are hundreds of other interesting novels that appeared then, known only to specialists: Spanish picaresques, French heroic romances, massive Chinese novels, Japanese graphic novels, eccentric English novels, and the earliest American novels. These minor novels are not only interesting in their own right, but also provide the context needed to appreciate why the major novels were major breakthroughs. The novel experienced an explosive growth spurt during these centuries as novelists experimented with different forms and genres: epistolary novels, romances, Gothic thrillers, novels in verse, parodies, science fiction, episodic road trips, and family sagas, along with quirky, unclassifiable experiments in fiction that resemble contemporary, avant-garde works. As in his previous volume, Moore privileges the innovators and outriders, those who kept the novel novel.
In the most comprehensive history of this period ever written, Moore examines over 400 novels from around the world in a lively style that is as entertaining as it is informative. Though written for a general audience, The Novel, An Alternative History also provides the scholarly apparatus required by the serious student of the period. This sequel, like its predecessor, is a "zestfully encyclopedic, avidly opinionated, and dazzlingly fresh history of the most 'elastic' of literary forms" (Booklist).
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: The Early Modern European Novel
Spanish
German
Latin
Chapter 2: The Early Modern French Novel
Chapter 3: The Early Modern English Novel
Chapter 4: The Early Modern Eastern Novel
Chinese
Korean
Japanese
Tibetan
Persian
Indian
Chapter 5: The Early Modern American Novel
Bibliography
Chronological Index of Novels Discussed
General Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
