The Experimental Impulse in George Meredith's Fiction
This book argues that George Meredith as a writer of Victorian fiction is most critical for us today because of the ways in which he wrote against convention. The focus is on 'An Essay on Comedy' and six novels - 'The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,' 'The Adventures of Harry Richmond,' 'The Egoist,' 'One of Our Conquerors,' 'Lord Ormont and His Aminta,' and 'The Amazing Marriage' - all of which illuminate the experimental and transgressive impulse in Meredith, as seen in his treatment of controversial contemporary themes, in his departures from conventions of genre, and in his innovations with narrative technique and the representation of consciousness. These are novels that had a profoundly stimulating effect on many of those canonical writers we now associate with the first wave of modernism in the English novel. James, and then Woolf, Forster, Lawrence, Conrad, Ford, and Joyce, to varying degrees, all saw Meredith as an influence to be reckoned with in their own novelistic experimentation - an influence, this book proposes, essential to understanding the modernist translation of nineteenth-century realism into new formal, thematic, and psychological realms.
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The Experimental Impulse in George Meredith's Fiction
This book argues that George Meredith as a writer of Victorian fiction is most critical for us today because of the ways in which he wrote against convention. The focus is on 'An Essay on Comedy' and six novels - 'The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,' 'The Adventures of Harry Richmond,' 'The Egoist,' 'One of Our Conquerors,' 'Lord Ormont and His Aminta,' and 'The Amazing Marriage' - all of which illuminate the experimental and transgressive impulse in Meredith, as seen in his treatment of controversial contemporary themes, in his departures from conventions of genre, and in his innovations with narrative technique and the representation of consciousness. These are novels that had a profoundly stimulating effect on many of those canonical writers we now associate with the first wave of modernism in the English novel. James, and then Woolf, Forster, Lawrence, Conrad, Ford, and Joyce, to varying degrees, all saw Meredith as an influence to be reckoned with in their own novelistic experimentation - an influence, this book proposes, essential to understanding the modernist translation of nineteenth-century realism into new formal, thematic, and psychological realms.
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The Experimental Impulse in George Meredith's Fiction

The Experimental Impulse in George Meredith's Fiction

by Richard C. Stevenson
The Experimental Impulse in George Meredith's Fiction

The Experimental Impulse in George Meredith's Fiction

by Richard C. Stevenson

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Overview

This book argues that George Meredith as a writer of Victorian fiction is most critical for us today because of the ways in which he wrote against convention. The focus is on 'An Essay on Comedy' and six novels - 'The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,' 'The Adventures of Harry Richmond,' 'The Egoist,' 'One of Our Conquerors,' 'Lord Ormont and His Aminta,' and 'The Amazing Marriage' - all of which illuminate the experimental and transgressive impulse in Meredith, as seen in his treatment of controversial contemporary themes, in his departures from conventions of genre, and in his innovations with narrative technique and the representation of consciousness. These are novels that had a profoundly stimulating effect on many of those canonical writers we now associate with the first wave of modernism in the English novel. James, and then Woolf, Forster, Lawrence, Conrad, Ford, and Joyce, to varying degrees, all saw Meredith as an influence to be reckoned with in their own novelistic experimentation - an influence, this book proposes, essential to understanding the modernist translation of nineteenth-century realism into new formal, thematic, and psychological realms.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611482027
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 10/01/2004
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Richard Stevenson is Professor of English at the University of Oregon, where he teaches courses in the British novel.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments9
Introduction13
1An Essay on Comedy: Theorizing Tradition and Innovation24
2The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: Challenges to Patriarchy and the Boundaries of Genre38
3The Adventures of Harry Richmond and the Disintegration of Identity63
4The Egoist: The Female Hero as Agent of Exposure87
5One of Our Conquerors: The Anatomy of a Marriage117
6Lord Ormont and His Aminta: Escape from Patriarchy and the Problem of Narrative Dissonance148
7The Amazing Marriage and the Construction of Feminine Identity167
Conclusion: George Meredith in the Twentieth Century and After189
Notes203
Bibliography225
Index234
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