Possibilities: Essays on the State of the Novel
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Author Description
pt. 1. The novel and The open the novel and reality --pt. 2. The novel and the comic Fielding, Sterne, and the comic modes of fiction --'The most interesting moving picture': Fanny Hill and comedy -- moral comedy in Emma and Persuasion --pt. 3. Phases of the novel and the 1920s --E.M. Forster as Victorian and Howards End and A passage to India --Virginia Wool and Ford Madox two styles of modernity --The modern comic novel in the 1920 Lewis, Huxley, and Waugh --pt. 4. The novel The postwar English novel --Malcolm Lowry as modernist --William Cooper and the 1950 Scenes from provincial life --C.P. Snow's bleak landscape --The fiction of the comic mode of Angus Wilson --'A house fit for free characters': Iris Murdoch and Under the net --Muriel Spark's fingernails --The novelist as John Fowles and his Magus --pt. 5. Towards a poetics of the The novel and its poetics.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This collection of essays investigates the evolution of the novel as a form, questioning how the genre adapts to changing social realities and aesthetic demands. Malcolm Bradbury, a distinguished academic and novelist, utilizes his deep familiarity with the history of English literature to examine the tension between traditional narrative structures and the experimental impulses of modernism. He argues that the novel is a uniquely flexible medium, capable of absorbing diverse comic, moral, and structural modes to reflect the complexities of the twentieth century.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of 18th-century comic modes in the works of Fielding and Sterne.
- Critical examinations of modernist figures including E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and Ford Madox Ford.
- Evaluations of post-war English literature, focusing on authors like Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, and John Fowles.
- Theoretical inquiries into the poetics of the novel and its relationship to reality.
Scope Limits
- The text focuses primarily on the British novel, excluding significant coverage of American or continental European traditions.
- The analysis is bounded by the mid-twentieth century, omitting developments in the novel form from the late 1980s onward.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars and students of literature frequently cite this work as a sophisticated bridge between academic theory and the practical craft of fiction writing. Readers often note the dense, scholarly prose, which assumes a high level of familiarity with the primary texts being discussed.
Page Count:
297
Publication Date:
1973-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0192121898
ISBN-13:
9780192121899
Non-Fiction
Essays
English fiction
Literary theory
British literature
Literary Criticism
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