P. Logan – The Encyclopedia of the Novel

Автор: P. Logan
Название книги: The Encyclopedia of the Novel
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Литературоведение
Страницы: 999
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

The Encyclopedia of the Novel is an advanced
desktop reference source on the novel as a
literary genre. International in scope, its articles
focus on the history, terminology, and
concepts essential to studying the genre. While
available to the beginner, the Encyclopedia is
aimed at a wider, more experienced audience.
Its goal is to assist specialists, graduate students,
and teachers who are working in fields
ancillary to their areas of expertise, and also to
help the interested general reader looking for
detailed, reliable information. As the first
reference source entirely devoted to the global
history, theory, form of the novel, the Encyclopedia
offers extensive coverage of advanced
concepts in those areas.
Given that no consensus exists on what
constitutes a “novel,” the editors had to
consider the scope of this project carefully.
Novels, we thought, ought to be in prose,
and yet we have important novels that use
verse (Jean Toomer) and others written
entirely in verse (Elizabeth Barrett Browning).
Novels should at least have a narrative,
and yet we have novels without narrative
(Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras).
We also have novels without characters
(Samuel Beckett), novels that are not fiction
(Truman Capote), and countless novels that
include one or all of these elements at some
point within them. Today, the closest scholars
come to a consensus is perhaps the
broad agreement on the explanatory power
of Mikhail Bakhtin’s claim that the novel is
not, in fact, a genre but is rather an antigenre,
a form of writing that parodies any
literary form that stands still long enough to
be identifiable.
And these are only the problems that arise
within a restricted definition of the novel
as a product of Western modernity. Recognizable
novels elsewhere predate the
eighteenth-century, the traditional starting
point for discussions of the modern novel,
including the Chinese Sanguo yanyi
(Romance of the Three Kingdoms), from
1552. Much older fictional or semi-fictional
narrative forms long predate modernity:
Petronius’s Satyricon and Chariton’s Callirhoe,
both from the first century CE, along
with China’s Shih-chi (ca. 85 BCE, Historical
Records) and South Asia’s katha and champu
works of the late first and early second
millennium. The entries on “Ancient
Narratives” discuss all of these, either as
novels or in relation to the novel genre.
In its global scope and temporal breadth,
this Encyclopedia can serve as a resource for
scholars interested in tracing the conjunctions
among national traditions and among
older and new narrative forms. It can serve
as a starting point for mapping kinships and
for understanding a particular novelistic
traditions, like national canons, as part of
a truly global context.
Scholars of novel studies lack a term like
poetry for novels, e.g., an all-encompassing,
loosely defined generic label that escapes the
sense of immediacy imparted by the definite
article in the novel. Few would argue that
poetry is synonymous with the poem; the
former refers to a capacious, abstract category
of writing, while the latter references a
concrete literary form. However, in critical
work on novels, the novel has long performed
double duty, serving both of these necessary functions, so much so that its
definite article is sometimes placed in quotation
marks—“the” novel—to clarify that
the writer means a heterogeneous rather
than homogeneous concept. This volume
takes a capacious approach to its namesake,
incorporating the fullest range of writings
that scholars call “novels” and giving significant
attention to the debate itself.
The editorial team consists of four scholars
who work on different geographical
traditions of the novel. Peter Melville Logan
writes on the British novel, Olakunle George
specializes in the African novel, Susan Hegeman
the American novel and literary theory,
and Efraın Kristal the novel in Latin America.
During the course of this project, they all
took on new areas of responsibility. Professor
Logan oversaw articles on book history
and the novel in Britain. Professor George
took charge of pieces on Africa, Asia, the
Middle East, and Eastern Europe, as well as
those on novel subgenres. Professor Hegeman
oversaw entries on North America,
Central Europe, and the contributions on
theory. Professor Kristal supervised articles
on Latin America, Western Europe, and the
entries on literary form. Assisting this
knowledgeable team was the international
consortium of scholars who made up the
Advisory Board for the volume, and the
editors are profoundly grateful to them for
their guidance and generosity.
This Encyclopedia could not have been
written without the pioneering work of Paul
Schellinger, who produced the invaluable Encyclopedia
of the Novel (1999, 2 vols.). That
work devoted the majority of its entries to an
international roster of individual novels and
novelists, and the reader looking for such
information is advised to go directly to that
source. Because of Professor Schellinger’s
work, the present volumeis able to focus solely
on the historical, formal, and theoretical aspects
of novels, and the editors are indebted to
his work for that opportunity.
ENCYCLOPEDIA DESIGN
The Encyclopedia consists of 145 separate
articles written by solicited contributors.
With few exceptions, all articles have been
peer-reviewed. In the selection of entries,
preference has been given to larger synthetic
entries on broad topics, with more specific
topics considered within that context. Critical
information that could not be included
in the lengthier pieces is given in short
entries. Entries are extensively cross-referenced
both within the article and through a
list of related entries following each article.
Subtopics of longer entries are also referenced
as blind entries within the alphabetical
flow of the Encyclopedia and within the
comprehensive index. Each entry includes a
bibliography for further reading.
Entries fall into four conceptual categories.
The largest group consists of articles on
formal and theoretical aspects of the genre.
These discuss elements within novels (such
as story, plot, character), stylistic matters
(rhetoric, narrative perspective), and major
subgenres (Historical Novel, Domestic
Novel), with a selective emphasis on those
common to several national or regional
traditions. Entries on the theory of the novel
and its terminology include articles on critical
theory, narrative theory, genre theory,
and the longstanding debates over histories
and definitions of the novel. The goal in
these articles is not to serve as a substitute
for a comprehensive study of these rich
topics but to describe in detail potentially
unfamiliar terms and critical premises that
scholars of the novel are likely to encounter
in their research, and also to supply beginning
points for further study.
Historical entries describe novels and novel
writing in different areas of the world.
Identifying regional labels proved to be a
complex task because of differences in how
scholars define these geographical fields.
The United States, for example, is one of the very few regions of the world that groups
novels by ethnicity. Linguistic categories are
more common; in the Caribbean and South
Asia, different languages produce novels that
may identify more with the country of linguistic
origin than with the multilingual
region of origin. In much of the world,
nationality is a dominant rubric in grouping
novels and novelists, and that poses problems
of its own, both because of the fluidity
of nation-states and because of difficulties
within the concept of national literatures in
general. Rather than inventing a consistent,
rational taxonomy bearing little relationship
to the world of novel studies today, the
editors chose a course of “rigorous inconsistency”
by adhering to actual practices in
scholarship as much as possible.
The novel has an intimate relationship to
the mediating role of print. Entries on the
history of the book discuss the materiality of
the novel, such as the technology of novels
and of their circulation, as these conditions
bear on novelistic form and content. The
episodic demands of serialization, for example,
affected the structure of plot, while
market needs often dictated that postcolonial
novelists write in the language of the
empire. Typography, paper, copyright
law—all contributed to shaping the genre,
and continue to do so, as in the emergence
of the cell-phone novel in Japan.
A small group of entries look at correlate
areas that bear on the history of the novel
and on the critical study of the genre. Some
of these consider the influence of other
genres of writing, such as journalism and
life writing. Others consider the impact that
new technologies, such as photography and
book illustration, have had on novels.
In designing the Encyclopedia, the editors
took into consideration one of the central
contradictions the project entailed. While it
is a global reference work, its contributors
are by definition well-established specialists
in regional or conceptual subfields. This is
fine for historical entries, but it can present a
dilemma for many other topics. The
concept of authorship, for instance, has
different histories in different places, and
a comprehensive treatment of the topic
would be itself a life’s work that could easily
fill this entire Encyclopedia. Instead, the
editors selected experts with a thorough
knowledge of the subject in a given place
and asked them to consider patterns and
problems that might be applicable elsewhere,
while at the same time expanding
the range of reference beyond any single
national context. Thus someone working
on a topic such as authorship should find
a useful articulation of conceptual issues
that have applicability beyond the regional
specifics it mentions.
In order to be as generous as possible in
referencing other works, a condensed citation
style has been adopted throughout.
While brief, each citation should provide
the minimum information necessary to locate
a given book or article. Bibliographies
at the end of the article are generally intended
as a brief list of further reading for
the researcher who needs to know where to
begin. Other references are cited parenthetically
in the text, as needed, and readers are
well advised to consider these as well.