The Cambridge companion to the novel
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Eric Bulson "The novel is sogged with humanity." E.M. Forster I "His studies are not very deep," one character says about another in George Eliot's Middlemarch, "he is only reading a novel." Just imagine if that same critical judgement about novels and novel readers were accurate today! Not only would it be assumed that we all read novels merely to pass the time, but also with the assumption that they don't have much to teach us in the first place. We'd only be reading a novel, and that's it. The real knowledge about life and living, we'd be told, lies elsewhere, maybe in the great epics of bygone ages, intensely private lyric poems, or sweeping dramas where all the world's a stage. The novel, of course, still has its detractors, but no one can deny that this literary genre runs "very deep." Part of that depth comes from the fact that the novel, a term ironically rooted in the Latin word for new (novum), is actually rather old. In fact, by some accounts it goes back 4,000 years to the narrative fictions of ancient Egypt with examples appearing subsequently as far afield as Hellenistic Greece, the histories and romances of medieval China and France, and the subgenres of modern England, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, Japan, and the United States. And if the forms of the novel are indeed many, they are evidence enough that there has been an ongoing desire across cultures and over millenia to tell fictional stories in prose about life"--,Provided by publisher.

"This Companion focuses on the novel as a global genre with a 2,000-year history. The first section includes an examination of the various genres out of which it emerged (epic, history, romance, the picaresque) and the different ways in which fiction and realism (magical, hyper, and social) were developed in response to specific political, social, and economic forces. The second section focuses on how the novel works, considering how it has played a crucial role in the formation of more abstract social, political, and familial identities. The third section considers what the novel has become and will continue to become in the twenty-first century. It examines the recent interest in graphic novels as well as data, digitization, and a global literary marketplace's role in shaping the future of the novel. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars studying the novel as a genre."--Publisher's description.