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The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740

Michael McKeon
15th Anniversary Edition, with a New Introduction by the Author
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The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, combines historical analysis and readings of extraordinarily diverse texts to reconceive the foundations of the dominant genre of the modern era. Now, on the fifteenth anniversary of its initial publication, The Origins of the English Novel stands as essential reading. The anniversary edition features a new introduction in which the author reflects on the considerable response and commentary the book has attracted since its publication by describing dialectical method and by applying it to early modern notions of gender.

Challenging prevailing...

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The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, combines historical analysis and readings of extraordinarily diverse texts to reconceive the foundations of the dominant genre of the modern era. Now, on the fifteenth anniversary of its initial publication, The Origins of the English Novel stands as essential reading. The anniversary edition features a new introduction in which the author reflects on the considerable response and commentary the book has attracted since its publication by describing dialectical method and by applying it to early modern notions of gender.

Challenging prevailing theories that tie the origins of the novel to the ascendancy of "realism" and the "middle class," McKeon argues that this new genre arose in response to the profound instability of literary and social categories. Between 1600 and 1740, momentous changes took place in European attitudes toward truth in narrative and toward virtue in the individual and the social order. The novel emerged, McKeon contends, as a cultural instrument designed to engage the epistemological and social crises of the age.

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Reviews

This book is a formidable attempt to articulate issues of almost imponderable centrality for modern life and literature. McKeon proposes with quite breathtaking ambition and considerable intellectual flourish to redefine the novel's key role in those immense cultural transformations that produce the modern world.

— Studies in the Novel

A magisterial work of history and analysis.

— Arts and Letters

One of the most rigorous and penetrating books I have read—and one of the most widely researched in its coverage of texts, theory, and historical developments.

— London Review of Books

A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come.

— Christopher Hill, New York Review of Books
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Available
Trim Size
6
x
9.25
Pages
560
ISBN
9780801869594
DOI
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Table of Contents

Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Fifteenth Anniversary Edition
Introduction: Dialectical Method in Literary History

PART I QUESTIONS OF TRUTH
Chapter One: The Destabilization of Generic

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Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Fifteenth Anniversary Edition
Introduction: Dialectical Method in Literary History

PART I QUESTIONS OF TRUTH
Chapter One: The Destabilization of Generic Categories
Chapter Two: The Evidence of the Senses: Secularization and Epistemological Crisis
Chapter Three: Histories of the Individual

PART II QUESTIONS OF VIRTUE
Chapter Four: The Destabilization of Social Categories
Chapter Five: Absolutism and Capitalist Ideology: The Volatility of Reform
Chapter Six: Stories of Virtue

PART III THE DIALECTICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE NOVEL
Chapter Seven: Romance Transformations (I) : Cervantes and the Disenchantment of the World
Chapter Eight: Romance Transformations (II) : Bunyan and Literalization of Allegory
Chapter Nine: Parables of the Younger Son (I) : Defoe and the Naturalization of Desire
Chapter Ten: Parables of the Younger Son (II) : Swift and the Containment of Desire
Chapter Eleven: The Institutionalization of Conflict (I) : Richardson and the Domestication of Service
Chapter Twelve: The Institutionalization of Conflict (II) : Fielding and the Instrumentality of Belief

Conclusion
Notes
Index

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Author Bio
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Michael McKeon

Michael McKeon is Board of Governors Professor of Literature at Rutgers University, the author of Politics and Poetry in Restoration England and The Origins of the English Novel, and the editor of Theory of the Novel.
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