The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists

by Michael Bell (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107484856
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/14/2012
Series:	Cambridge Companions to Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Michael Bell is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick.

Table of Contents

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.

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher