Reading the Novel

An indispensable tool for teachers and students of American literature, Reading the American Novel 1865-1914 provides a comprehensive introduction to the American novel in the post-civil war period. • Locates American novels and stories within a specific historical and literary context • Offers fresh analyses of key selected literary works • Addresses a wide audience of academics and non-academics in clear, accessible prose • Demonstrates the changing mentality of 19th-century America entering the 20th century • Explores the relationship between the intellectual and artistic output of the time and the turbulent socio-political context

This astute guide to the literary achievements of American novelists in the twentieth century places their work in its historical context and offers detailed analyses of landmark novels based on a clearly laid out set of tools for analyzing narrative form. • Includes a valuable overview of twentieth-and early twenty-first century American literary history • Provides analyses of numerous core texts including The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man, The Sound and the Fury, The Crying of Lot 49 and Freedom • Relates these individual novels to the broader artistic movements of modernism and postmodernism • Explains and applies key principles of rhetorical reading • Includes numerous cross-novel comparisons and contrasts

Reading the Eighteenth-Century Novel is a lively exploration of the evolution of the English novel from 1688-1815. A range of major works and authors are discussed along with important developments in the genre, and the impact of novels on society at the time. The text begins with a discussion of the "rise of the novel" in the long eighteenth century and various theories about the economic, social, and ideological changes that caused it. Subsequent chapters examine ten particular novels, from Oroonoko and Moll Flanders to Tom Jones and Emma, using each one to introduce and discuss different rhetorical theories of narrative. The way in which books developed and changed during this period, breaking new ground, and influencing later developments is also discussed, along with key themes such as the representation of gender, class, and nationality. The final chapter explores how this literary form became a force for social and ideological change by the end of the period. Written by a highly experienced scholar of English literature, this engaging textbook guides readers through the intricacies of a transformational period for the novel.

Reading the American Novel 1780-1865 provides valuable insights into the evolution and diversity of fictional genres produced in the United States from the late 18th century until the Civil War, and helps introductory students to interpret and understand the fiction from this popular period. • Offers an overview of early fictional genres and introduces ways to interpret them today • Features in depth examinations of specific novels • Explores the social and historical contexts of the time to help the readers' understanding of the stories • Explores questions of identity-about the novel, its 19th-century readers, and the emerging structure of the United States-as an important backdrop to understanding American fiction • Profiles the major authors, including Louisa May Alcott, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, alongside less familiar writers such as Fanny Fern, Caroline Kirkland, George Lippard, Catharine Sedgwick, and E. D. E. N. Southworth.

An exploration of the modern European novel from a renowned English literature scholar Reading the Modern European Novel since 1900 is an engaging, in-depth examination of the evolution of the modern European novel. Written in Daniel R. Schwarz's precise and highly readable style, this critical study offers compelling discussions on a wide range of major works since 1900 and examines recurring themes within the context of significant historical events, including both World Wars and the Holocaust. The author cites important developments in the evolution of the modern novel and explores how these paradigmatic works of fiction reflect intellectual and cultural history, including developments in painting and cinema. Schwarz focuses on narrative complexity, thematic subtlety, and formal originality as well as how novels render historical events and cultural developments Discussing major works by Proust, Camus, Mann, Kafka, Grass, di Lampedusa, Bassani, Kertesz, Pamuk, Kundera, Saramago, Muller and Ferrante, Schwarz explores how these often experimental masterworks pay homage to the their major predecessors-discussed in Schwarz's ground-breaking Reading the European Novel to 1900-even while proposing radical departures from realism in their approach to time and space, their testing the limits of language, and their innovative ways of rendering the human psyche. Written for teachers and students by a highly-acclaimed scholar and including valuable study questions, Reading the Modern European Novel since 1900 offers a guide for a deeper understanding of how these original modern masters respond to both the past and present.

Written by one of literature's most esteemed scholars and critics, Reading the European Novel to 1900 is an engaging and in-depth examination of major works of the European novel from Cervantes' Don Quixote to Zola's Germinal. In Daniel R. Schwarz's inimitable style, which balances formal and historical criticism in precise, readable prose, this book offers close readings of individual texts with attention to each one's cultural and canonical context. Major texts that he discusses: Cervantes' Don Quixote; Stendhal's The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma; Balzac's Père Goriot; Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education; Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov; Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina; and Zola's Germinal. Schwarz examines the history and evolution of the novel during this period and defines each author's aesthetic, cultural, political, and historical significance. Incorporating important pedagogical suggestions and the latest research, this text provides accessible and lucid discussion of the European novel to 1900 for students, teachers, and general readers interested in the evolution of the novelistic form.

Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987—2007 is the authoritative guide to some of the most inventive and challenging fiction to emerge from Ireland in the last 25 years. Meticulously researched, it presents detailed interpretations of novels by some of Ireland's most eminent writers. • This is the first text-focused critical survey of the Irish novel from 1987 to 2007, providing detailed readings of 11 seminal Irish novels • A timely and much needed text in a largely uncharted critical field • Provides detailed interpretations of individual novels by some of the country's most critically celebrated writers, including Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien and Colm Tóibín • Investigates the ways in which Irish novels have sought to deal with and reflect a changing Ireland • The fruit of many years reading, teaching and research on the subject by a leading and highly respected academic in the field.