The Novel: Forms and Themes - Rilegato

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0691049483 ISBN 13: 9780691049489

Casa editrice: Princeton Univ Pr, 2006

Riassunto

Nearly as global in its ambition and sweep as its subject, Franco Moretti's The Novel is a watershed event in the understanding of the first truly planetary literary form. A translated selection from the epic five-volume ItalianIl Romanzo (2001-2003), The Novel's two volumes are a unified multiauthored reference work, containing more than one hundred specially commissioned essays by leading contemporary critics from around the world. Providing the first international comparative reassessment of the novel, these essential volumes reveal the form in unprecedented depth and breadth--as a great cultural, social, and human phenomenon that stretches from the ancient Greeks to today, where modernity itself is unimaginable without the genre.

By viewing the novel as much more than an aesthetic form, this landmark collection demonstrates how the genre has transformed human emotions and behavior, and the very perception of reality. Historical, statistical, and formal analyses show the novel as a complex literary system, in which new forms proliferate in every period and place.

Volume 2: Forms and Themes, views the novel primarily from the inside, examining its many formal arrangements and recurrent thematic manifestations, and looking at the plurality of the genre and its lineages.

These books will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literature.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2007
Honorable Mention for the 2007 John G. Cawelti Award, American Culture Association
"The most crucial aspect of the Il romanzo project is the idea driving it to see literature globally, to free 'the novel' from its modernist, strictly Western center of emergence and consider instead how the form has mutated around the world, and why."--Emilie Bickerton, Bookforum

"It's a rare literary critic who attracts so much public attention, and there's good reason: few are as hell-bent on rethinking the way we talk about literature. . . . There's no question that people will still be talking about these volumes twenty-five years from now."--Eric Bulson, Times Literary Supplement

"[A] very ambitious collection . . . . The Novel is an impressive achievement, and precisely because Moretti was so willing to include perspectives that diverge sharply from his own."--William Deresiewicz, Nation

Praise for Italian edition: "These volumes are a heroic attempt to capture the great animal of words that we call The Novel. The hunting strategy employed by Franco Moretti and his contributors proves complex and articulated but at the same time oblique and diversified. A merely systematic work could never handle this subject. Neither could a totally anarchic approach . . . . This work is destined to occupy an important place in contemporary reflections on the novel and on narrative forms in general. The essays are agile but not superficial, specialized but readable, and current . . . . More than anything else, [The Novel] arouses one's desire to read and reread literary works."--Dario Voltolini, La Stampa

Praise for Italian edition: "There are books that you read and reread, others that you consult when useful or just for the pleasure . . . . [The Novel] belongs to both categories because it is much more than a mere collection of essays on a specific subject (in this case, the novel as literary genre, reinterpreted through contributions by novelists, critics, philosophers, anthropologists, and historians from every part of the world). Its changing, evocative flavors are so mouthwatering that it is like a platter of tapas, the little appetizers served by Catalans before a meal, which often take the place of an entire meal. The topic is books--a continuous game of citations and reflections. From the outset, it gives the reader symptoms of an ancient hunger. We are not sure what pushes us to read it and we try to grab and hold on to as much of it as possible . . . . [The Novel] is not a book. It is a Pantagruelian feast that awakens limitless appetites. It helps to remind us how many flavors can be found in literature and--above all--how many we have lost by eating fast food for the brain."--Diego De Silva, Il Mattino

Praise for Italian edition: "[These] interesting, useful books . . . are not humble, simply informative manuals: they offer essays that lead in multiple directions and examine fundamental problems and questions. They assess the breadth of current studies and they establish an analytical horizon for advanced contemporary culture."--Giulio Ferrot, L'Unita

"When you open The Novel . . . you may think you know what a novel is; by the time you close it . . . you are no longer sure. . . . The sheer diversity of topics here is exciting and opens up many new horizons. . . . It is impossible to understand why the novel has been the quintessential modern art form, and why it has appealed to writers and readers around the globe, without understanding the circumstances of its rise in Western Europe in the 18th century. . . . [I]t helped to incarnate the modern sensibility, and to teach its readers what it means to be modern. . . . If the novel is indeed losing its central position in our imaginative life . . . it can only be because modernity itself is slipping away, with all it distinctive promise and menace."--Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

"An essential resource for all academic collections serving students of language and literature."--Thomas L. Cooksey, Library Journal

"This two-volume set is the most important resource on the novel now available. Like the novel itself, this work spans the globe and the centuries. . . . Essential."--Choice

Contenuti:

On The Novel ix

2.1. THE LONG DURATION

The Novel in Search of Itself: A Historical Morphology by THOMAS PAVEL 3

Epic, Novel by MASSIMO FUSILLO 32

The Poetry of Mediocrity by SYLVIE THOREL-CAILLETEAU 64

The Experiments of Time: Providence and Realism by FREDRIC JAMESON 95

Readings: Prototypes

Massimo Fusillo, Aethiopika (Heliodorus, Third or Fourth Century) 131
Abdelfattah Kilito, Maqamat (Hamadhanÿ FD, Late Tenth Century) 138
Francisco Rico, Lazarillo de Tormes ("Lázaro de Tormes," circa 1553) 146
Thomas DiPiero, Le Grand Cyrus (Madeleine de Scudéry, 1649-1653) 152
Perry Anderson, Persian Letters (Montesquieu, 1721) 161
Ian Duncan, Waverley (Walter Scott, 1814) 173
Paolo Tortonese, The Mysteries of Paris (Eugène Sue, 1842-1843) 181
Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, The War of the Worlds (H. G. Wells, 1898) 189
Ambrosio Fornet, The Kingdom of This World (Alejo Carpentier, 1949) 196

2.2. WRITING PROSE

Forms of the Supernatural in Narrative by FRANCESCO ORLANDO 207

The Prose of the World by MICHAL PELED GINSBURG AND LORRI G. NANDREA 244

Excess and History in Hugo's Ninety-three by UMBERTO ECO 274

Minor Characters by ALEX WOLOCH 295

324 Toward a Database of Novelistic Topoi by NATHALIE FERRAND 324

2.3. THEMES, FIGURES

The Fiction of Bourgeois Morality and the Paradox of Individualism by NANCY ARMSTRONG 349

The Death of Lucien de Rubempré by A. S. BYATT 389

A Portrait of the Artist as a Social Climber: Upward Mobility in the Novel by BRUCE ROBBINS 409

A Businessman in Love by FREDRIC JAMESON 436

Readings: Narrating Politics

Benedict Anderson, Max Havelaar (Multatuli, 1860) 449
Luisa Villa, The Tiger of Malaysia (Emilio Salgari, 1883-1884) 463
Edoarda Masi, Ah Q (Lu Hsün, 1921-1922) 469
Thomas Lahusen, Cement (Fedor Gladkov, 1925) 476
Piergiorgio Bellocchio, A Private Matter (Beppe Fenoglio, 1963) 483
Simon Gikandi, Arrow of God (Chinua Achebe, 1964) 489
José Miguel Oviedo, Conversation in the Cathedral (Mario Vargas Llosa, 1969) 497
Klaus R. Scherpe, The Aesthetics of Resistance (Peter Weiss, 1975-1981) 503

Readings: The Sacrifice of the Heroine

April Alliston, Aloisa and Melliora (Love in Excess, Eliza Haywood, 1719-1720) 515
Juliet Mitchell, Natasha and Hélène (War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, 1863-1869) 534
Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau, Nana (Nana, Émile Zola, 1880) 541
Valentine Cunningham, Tess (Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, 1891) 548
Peter Madsen, Elsie (The Dangerous Age, Karin Michaëlis, 1910) 559

2.4. S PACE AND STORY

Over-writing as Un-writing: Descriptions, World-Making, and Novelistic Time by MIEKE BAL 571

The Roads of the Novel by HANS ULRICH GUMBRECHT 611

The Chronotopes of the Sea by MARGARET COHEN 647

667 Torn Space: James Joyce's Ulysses by PHILIP FISHER 667

Readings: The New Metropolis

Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai (Midnight, Mao Dun, 1932) 687
Ernesto Franco, Buenos Aires (Adán Buenosayres, Leopoldo Marechal, 1948) 693
Ernest Emenyonu, Lagos (People of the City, Cyprian Ekwensi, 1954) 700
Roger Allen, Cairo (The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz, 1956-1957) 706
Ardis L. Nelson, Havana (Three Trapped Tigers, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, 1967) 714
Homi Bhabha, Bombay (Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie, 1981) 721
Sibel Irzik, Istanbul (The Black Book, Orhan Pamuk, 1990) 728

2.5. UNCERTAIN BOUNDARIES

Form and Chance: The German Novella by ANDREAS GAILUS 739

Inconceivable History: Storytelling as Hyperphasia and Disavowal by FRANCIS MULHERN 777

Innovation: Notes on Nihilism and the Aesthetics of the Novel by JOHN BRENKMAN 808

Narrative Literature in the Turing Universe by ESPEN AARSETH 839

Readings: A Century of Experiments

871 Andreina Lavagetto, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1910) 871
Myra Jehlen, The Making of Americans (Gertrude Stein, 1925) 880
Ann Banfield, Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf, 1925) 888
José Luiz Passos, Macunaíma (Mário de Andrade, 1928) 896
Seamus Deane, Finnegans Wake ( James Joyce, 1939) 906
Declan Kiberd, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable (Samuel Beckett, 1951-1953) 912
Beatriz Sarlo, Hopscotch ( Julio Cortázar, 1963) 919
Ursula K. Heise, Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, 1973) 926

Contributors 933

Author Index 937

Works Cited Index 944

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Princeton Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0691049483
• ISBN 13: 9780691049489
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 950
• Redattore: Moretti Franco