A Companion to the English Novel (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture) - Softcover

A COMPANION TO THE ENGLISH NOVEL

"The Companion is more than a useful and up-to-date reference work. It's a genuinely exciting collection of brand new essays by some of the most important living scholars of the English novel. There is no other single volume from which one can learn so much on the subject."

James English, University of Pennsylvania

"The combined expertise of a team of able contributors and the ingenious planning that allows the English novel to be approached from a variety of perspectives make this a distinctive, and distinctly useful, volume, whether it is dipped into or read right through."

Derek Attridge, University of York

A Companion to the English Novel presents a collection of authoritative essays that represent the latest scholarship on topics relating to the themes, movements, and forms of English fiction while chronicling its development in Britain from the early eighteenth century to the present day, including the emergence of a global anglophone fiction. Featuring contributions from renowned experts and emerging scholars, readings offer cutting-edge critical analyses of all aspects of the English novel.

Initial essays explore the history of the English novel tradition, followed by an examination of genres such as realism, romance, Gothic, and experimental fiction, as well as of the relation between novels and film. Subsequent chapters explore formal features of the novel such as narration, structure, character, and affect. Others examine shifts in critical reception of the English novel, analyze the geographies of contemporary English fiction, and look to the future. Reflecting the most up-to-date scholarship in a field that has undergone dramatic changes in recent times, A Companion to the English Novel is an indispensable resource, adding to our current understanding of the origins and evolution of the rich literary tradition of fictional works produced in Great Britain over the past two centuries.