The Novel : Language and Narrative From Cervantes to Calvino

"The novel, Brink argues, is not about representation but the self-conscious play of language. From its inception, he suggests, the genre has been about the act of writing and self-reflection. This thesis is not new but is part of the currency of postmodern literary theory. Brink, himself a noted South African novelist, the author of some 12 books, including A Dry White Season (1984), and a university professor, brings the insight of an insider. He surveys 15 celebrated novels, historically arranged from Don Quixote and La Princesse de Cleves to A.S. Byatt's Possession and Italo Calvino's If on a Winter Night a Traveller examining each in terms of its play with writing and language. His discussions are marked by clarity, insight, and comprehension. A valuable book." --Thomas L. Cooksey, Library Journal "What a treat to explore the novel as a genre through the lucid eyes of André Brink, himself one of the world's foremost novelists! I particularly enjoyed the way in which the most traditional novels were revealed as contemporary and entirely relevant." --Ariel Dorfman The postmodernist novel has become famous for the extremes of its narcissistic involvement with language. In this challenging and wide-ranging new study, André Brink argues that this self-consciousness has been a defining characteristic of the novel since its inception. Taking as his starting point "the propensity for story" embedded in all language, he demonstrates that the old familiar novels may be the more startlingly modern, while postmodernist texts remain more firmly rooted in convention. From the beginnings of the genre with Don Quixote, through "classic" novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and modern and postmodern texts of the twentieth, Brink performs a sweeping analysis of 500 years of the novel, including Moll Flanders, Emma, Madame Bovary, The Trial, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Possession. As an internationally recognized novelist, he brings a unique critical eye and enthusiasm to his exploration of the genre, offering the reader a refreshing and rewarding introduction to the novel and narrative theory. "The Postmodernist novel has become famous for the extremes of its narcissistic involvement with language. In this challenging and wide-ranging new study, Andr ̌Brink argues that this self-consciousness has been a characteristic of the novel since its earliest stirrings. More specifically, every novel appears both to construct, and to be constructed by, its own notion of language, elaborated through all the strategies of narrative. Taking as his starting point 'the propensity for story' embedded in language, he offers stimulating new readings of novels from Cervantes to Calvino, demonstrating that in many respects the old familiar texts may be more startlingly modern, and the Postmodernist texts more firmly rooted in convention, than we tend to think."-- Provided by publisher The Postmodernist novel has become famous for the extremes of its narcissistic involvement with language. In this challenging and wide-ranging new study, André Brink argues that this self-consciousness has been a characteristic of the novel since its earliest stirrings. More specifically, every novel appears both to construct, and to be constructed by, its own notion of language, elaborated through all the strategies of narrative. Taking as his starting point 'the propensity for story' embedded in language, he offers stimulating new readings of novels from Cervantes to Calvino, demonstrating that in many respects the old familiar texts may be more startlingly modern, and the Postmodernist texts more firmly rooted in convention, than we tend to think. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction: Languages of the Novel....Pages 1-19 The Wrong Side of the Tapestry....Pages 20-45 Courtly Love, Private Anguish....Pages 46-64 ‘The Woman’s Snare’....Pages 65-85 The Dialogic Pact....Pages 86-103 Charades....Pages 104-125 The Language of Scandal....Pages 126-146 Quoted in Slang....Pages 147-172 The Tiger’s Revenge....Pages 173-188 A Room without a View....Pages 189-206 The Perfect Crime....Pages 207-230 Making and Unmaking....Pages 231-252 Withdrawal and Return....Pages 253-268 Taking the Gap....Pages 269-287 Possessed by Language....Pages 288-308 The Pranks of Hermes....Pages 309-329 Back Matter....Pages 330-373 The postmodernist novel has become famous for the extremes of its narcissistic involvement with language. Andrâe Brink argues that this self-consciousness has been a characteristic of the novel since its earliest stirrings