The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists

A survey of 25 major European novelists from Cervantes to Kundera, highlighting their contributions to the genre.

Michael Bell (Edited by)

9780521515047, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 June 2012

476 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.8 kg

"Each chapter includes a bibliography of primary texts and suggestions for further reading, and Bell frankly and honestly admits that the book leaves out many important novelists, some of whom are listed in a long sentence that ends, appropriately enough, in an ellipsis." --Choice

A lively and comprehensive account of the whole tradition of European fiction for students and teachers of comparative literature, this volume covers twenty-five of the most significant and influential novelists in Europe from Cervantes to Kundera. Each essay examines an author's use of, and contributions to, the genre and also engages an important aspect of the form, such as its relation to romance or one of its sub-genres, such as the Bildungsroman. Larger theoretical questions are introduced through specific readings of exemplary novels. Taking a broad historical and geographic view, the essays keep in mind the role the novel itself has played in the development of European national identities and in cultural history over the last four centuries. While conveying essential introductory information for new readers, these authoritative essays reflect up-to-date scholarship and also review, and sometimes challenge, conventional accounts.

Introduction: the novel in Europe, 1600–1900 Michael Bell
1. Miguel de Cervantes Edwin Williamson
2. Daniel Defoe Cynthia Wall
3. Samuel Richardson Thomas Keymer
4. Henry Fielding Thomas Lockwood
6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Timothy O'Hagan
7. Laurence Sterne Michael Bell
8. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Martin Swales
9. Walter Scott Susan Manning
10. Stendhal Ann Jefferson
11. Mary Shelley David Punter
12. Honoré de Balzac Michael Tilby
13. Charles Dickens John Bowen
14. George Eliot John Rignall
15. Gustave Flaubert Timothy Unwin
16. Fyodor Dostoevsky Sarah Young
17. Leo Tolstoy Donna Tussing Orwin
18. Emile Zola Brian Nelson
19. Henry James Angus Wrenn
20. Marcel Proust Marion Schmid
21. Thomas Mann Ritchie Robertson
22. James Joyce Christopher Butler
23. Virginia Woolf Laura Marcus
24. Samuel Beckett Leslie Hill
25. Milan Kundera Rajendra A. Chitnis
Conclusion: the European novel after 1900 Michael Bell
Further reading
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: general [DSB]