This short history of the novel will be a breathtaking account of the novel from its early beginnings, the circumstances and forms from which the novel emerged. This book will be argumentative and amenable to being read in a single sitting. It will begin at perhaps an unconventional point, with Plutarch and the great narratives of Roman and Greek life. James Wood will then move on to a discussion of Chaucer, Shakespeare and the beginnings of the notion of character, Shakespearean comedy as a precursor of Dickensian comedy, Don Quixote and his influence on 18th-century fiction, as well as on Hasek, Kundera. Then on to a chapter about Flaubert and the 19th century in which Wood will argue that he is the least representative novelist yet the most influential, particularly for his invention of 'style'.
Next comes the rise of the female heroine - Madame Bovary, Jane Austen's women, Tess, Anna Karenina, Isobel Archer - then Dostoyevsky and the death of character and his influence on modernism; there will be a chapter on the short story, Chekhov, Maupassant, and on Joyce and Proust, the inimitables and the great modern summations of the entire history of the novel, and finally a polemical conclusion in which James Wood will ask 'Where have all the characters gone?'
- ISBN10 0297607731
- ISBN13 9780297607731
- Publish Date 17 June 2004
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 20 April 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 160
- Language English