The British Novel of Ideas
George Eliot to Zadie Smith

A bold new theorisation of the Novel of Ideas that incorporates innovative readings of key novelists in this tradition.

Rachel Potter (Edited by), Matthew Taunton (Edited by)

9781316514320, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 December 2024

502 pages
23.7 x 16.1 x 3.1 cm, 0.88 kg

The novel of ideas is an important form that is both under-theorised and largely neglected in accounts of the development of the novel in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book sets out the history of this critical hostility, which took hold as the aesthetic protocols of literary modernism became established among key literary tastemakers in Britain. It then proposes a revaluation and a critical reclamation of the novel of ideas, showcasing a range of perceptive, sympathetic, and sensitive ways of reading novels in which discursive argumentation is foregrounded and where the clash of ideas is vital to the novelistic effect. Through thematic chapters as well as new accounts of key novelists in the British tradition-including George Eliot, H. G. Wells, Doris Lessing and Kamila Shamsie-this book repositions the novel of ideas as a major form in modern British literature.

Part I. 1850–1900: Philosophy, Religion and the Victorian Novel of Ideas: 1. Moral ideation in the nineteenth-century British novel: rethinking character-character dialogue Amanda Anderson
2. George Eliot: realism and dialectics Ruth Abbott
3. Samuel Butler: ideas against themselves John Kucich
4. George Gissing: idealism and social reform Benjamin Kohlmann
Part II. 1900–1945: The Novel of Ideas, Revolution and Reform: 5. The British novel of ideas in an international context Rachel Potter
6. H. G. Wells: exposition and dialogue Suzanne Hobson
7. G. K. Chesterton: tradition and ideals Christos Hadjiyannis
8. E. M. Forster: liberal propositions and liberal proceduralism Janice Ho
9. Aldous Huxley: mysticism and science Jake Poller
10. Katharine Burdekin: self and not self Glyn Salton-Cox
11. Mulk Raj Anand: anticolonialism and abjection Anindya Raychaudhuri
12. Storm Jameson: fascism and liberalism Katherine Cooper
Part III. 1945–1975: the Novel of Ideas and the Cold War: 13. The psycho-political novel of ideas and the Second World War Adam Piette
14. Naomi Mitchison: Nation and history James Purdon
15. George Orwell: politics and power Nathan Waddell
16. Rebecca West: trials and retribution Allan Hepburn
17. George Lamming: colonialism and rumination Douglas Mao
18. Doris Lessing: espionage and speculative fiction Peter Kalliney
19. Iris Murdoch: Philosophy and the Novel David Dwan
Part IV. 1975–present: The Contemporary Novel of Ideas
20. Comedy, sincerity and hypocrisy in the novel of ideas Matthew Taunton
21. Malcolm Bradbury: sociology and satire Nicoletta Pireddu
22. Hanif Kureishi: fundamentalism and multiculturalism Michael Perfect
23. Ian McEwan: ideation and realism Dominic Head
24. Kamila Shamsie: citizenship and civil rights Birgit Breidenbach
25. Zadie Smith: Art and Beauty Peter Boxall.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]