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The Story of the Novel
A lively and accessible guide to the development of the novel, emphasising a thematic approach to the conventions and variety of the form.
ISBN-13: 9780718830946 |
As George Watson playfully observes, the story is the best thing about a novel. The deliberately ambiguous title of his book reflects the fact that it combines a study of the art of narrative with the history of the novel as a literary form, since its emergence some three centuries ago.
Employing a thematic approach, the author moves from one aspect of narrative to another rather than discussing novelists chronologically. The book considers various kinds of novels, such as the memoir novel and discusses issues such as the presentation of dialogue, the creation of scenes, tense and time and the relationship between the novel and history.
Arguments are illustrated by well-known rather than obscure works, or novels likely to be familiar to students who take this book as a starting-point for the modern study of narrative. The reader is presented with a clear picture of how the novel has evolved and how its chief conventions have developed and changed since the seventeenth century.
This new and revised edition brings back to life this invaluable and straightforward work on the technique of the novel, which first appeared in 1979.
"Mr Watson has written a lively and illuminating account of the development of a particular genre ... his lucidity is most welcome."
Journal of Further & Higher Education
George Watson is Fellow in English at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He has published a number of books on literature and political thought, including The Literary Critics, its sequel, Never Ones for Theory?, The English Ideology, Lost Literature of Socialism and Take Back the Past, also published by The Lutterworth Press. He has been Sandars Reader in Bibliography, and is editor of the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature.
Other titles available by George Watson:
The English Ideology
Lost Literature of Socialism (Paperback Edition (Reprint))
Lost Literature of Socialism (Hardback Edition)
Lost Literature of Socialism (Paperback Edition)
Never Ones For Theory? England and the War of Ideas (Hardback Edition)
Never Ones For Theory? England and the War of Ideas (Paperback Edition)
Take Back the Past: Myths of the Twentieth Century
The Lutterworth Press
PO Box 60, Cambridge, CB1 2NT, England
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 350865 Fax: +44 (0) 1223 366951
email: publishing@lutterworth.com
