The Cambridge Companion to the Novel Cambridge Companions to Literature Series

This Companion focuses on the novel as a global genre with a 2,000-year history. The first section includes an examination of the various genres out of which it emerged (epic, history, romance, the picaresque) and the different ways in which fiction and realism (magical, hyper, and social) were developed in response to specific political, social, and economic forces. The second section focuses on how the novel works, considering how it has played a crucial role in the formation of more abstract social, political, and familial identities. The third section considers what the novel has become and will continue to become in the twenty-first century. It examines the recent interest in graphic novels as well as data, digitization, and a global literary marketplace's role in shaping the future of the novel. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars studying the novel as a genre.

Introduction Eric Bulson; Part I. What is a Novel?: 1. The novel as genre Vilashini Cooppan; 2. Rises of the novel, ancient and modern Alexander Beecroft; 3. Epic/novel Kent Puckett; 4. The novel as encyclopedia David James; 5. Realism and the novel Michael Sayeau; 6. Modernism and the novel Catherine Flynn; Part II. How does the Novel work?: 7. Novels and characters Marta Figlerowicz; 8. Novels and readers Suzanne Keen; 9. The space of the novel Robert T. Tally, Jr; 10. The novel and the law Robert Spoo; 11. The novel as data The Stanford Literary Lab (Mark Algee-Hewitt, Erik Fredner, Hannah Walser); Part III. Where is the Novel Going?: 12. The novel as commodity Priya Joshi; 13. The graphic novel Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey; 14. The novel in the digital age Jessica Pressman; 15. The novel as planetary form Joseph Keith.

Eric Bulson is Professor of English at Claremont Graduate University. He has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the New York Public Library. His books include Little Magazine, World Form (2016), Novels, Maps, Modernity: The Spatial Imagination, 1850–2000 (2007), and The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce (Cambridge, 2006). He is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, and in addition to publishing articles in journals such as Representations, New German Critique, and the Journal of Modern Literature is also the co-editor of the three-volume Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Global Modernist Magazines. His next book, Ulysses by Numbers: Counting Literature in a Digital World, is forthcoming.