True Story of the Novel - Hardcover

Doody

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813521688 ISBN 13: 9780813521688

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1996

Synopsis

Twentieth-century historians and critics defending the novel have emphasized its role as "superseding" something else, as a sort of legitimate usurper that deposed the Epic, a replacement of myth, or religious narrative. To say that the Age of Early Christianity was really also the Age of the Novel rumples such historical tidiness--but so it was. From the outset of her discussion, Doody rejects the conventional Anglo-Saxon distinction between Romance and Novel. This eighteenth-century distinction, she maintains, served both to keep the foreign--dark-skinned peoples, strange speakers, Muslims, and others--largely out of literature, and to obscure the diverse nature of the novel itself.This deeply informed and truly comparative work is staggering in its breadth. Doody treats not only recognized classics, but also works of usually unacknowledged subgenres--new readings of novels like "The Pickwick Papers," "Puddn'head Wilson," "L'Assommoir," "Death in Venice," and "Beloved " are accompanied by insights into "Death on the Nile" or "The Wind in the Willows. "Non-Western writers like Chinua Achebe and Witi Ihimaera are also included. In her last section, Doody goes on to show that Chinese and Japanese novels, early "and" late, bear a strong and not incidental affinity to their Western counterparts. Collectively, these readings offer the basis for a serious reassessment of the history and the nature of the novel."The True Story of the Novel "marks the beginning of the twenty-first century's understanding of fiction and of culture. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in literature.

About this title

Review:

‘Rich, imaginative, subversive and playful’
James Wood, Observer

‘An elegant, learned and convincing book’
Mary Beard, Independent

‘Doody, vigorously, entertainingly and with great detailed learning, has invaluably extended the debate about fiction.’
Malcolm Bradbury, Financial Times

‘Doody’s book is like a vast, all-embracing novel, packed with extraordinary sub-narratives and an engrossing storyline. It should be read by all who criticise fiction, and by many who write it.’
Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times

From the Back Cover:

"One of the most successful literary lies is the English claim to have invented the novel. One of the best-kept literary secrets is the existence of novels in antiquity."

In this extraordinary and subversive book, Margaret Anne Doody challenges the conventional view of the novel, arguing that instead of being the defining achievement of the English middle class, the novel is an older, more cosmopolitan creation, a protean form that emerged from the ancient cultures of Africa, Asia and Europe.

Before literary history discarded the ancient novel, Doody argues, these stories by the Syrians, the Africans, the Greeks and many others – written in Greek and Latin during the first millennium AD – commanded a wide, devoted audience. The influence of such writings was acknowledged by later masters of the novel, Cervantes and Fielding included. But the ancient novel mysteriously disappeared from bookshelves in the mid-eighteenth century, around the same time the English novel was born. According to Doody, European cultural elitism had by then asserted itself to great effect, relegating the prose fiction of the ancient Mediterranean world to the trash heap of 'Romance', thus skilfully keeping the 'foreign' out of literature.

Stimulating, entertaining, staggering in its breadth, thrilling in its detective work, this marvellous book generously and persuasively welcomes back whole shelves of fiction, demonstrating, in one fell swoop, how all current introductions and textbooks are misleading and misled. 'The True Story of the Novel' marks the beginning of the twenty-first century's understanding of the history of literature.

Margaret Anne Doody is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of several books, including the novel 'Aristotle Detective' and a biography of Frances Burney.

"Written with verve and wit, and by any standard an extraordinary and idiosyncratic achievement. The closest comparison available is with Fry's 'Anatomy of Criticism', which caused such a stir almost forty years ago. Doody acknowledges a certain affinity with that formidable work, while insisting, quite rightly, that she is trying to do something different: for one thing, it is always relevant that she is a woman, laying down a different law from Fry's or any man's, and combatively aware of masculine (and also British-imperialist) presumptions that can now be contested even though they retain a vestige of their classic authority. I find it difficult to give a fair idea of the exuberance, intelligence and boldness of this book."
FRANK KERMODE, 'London Review of Books'

"Wonderful and truly revolutionary.
With fascinating detail Doody obliterates the arbitrary distinction between the Novel and Romances.
After the publication of her work, it will become impossible to shut away the novels of antiquity as distant and disreputable. They will have to be recognised not merely as ancestors, but as living participants in a rich and thoroughly subversive genre."
MARTIN BERNAL, author of 'Black Athena'

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0813521688
• ISBN 13: 9780813521688
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 580