Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Encyclopedia of the Novel is an advanced desktop reference source on the novel as a literary genre. International in scope, its articles focus on the history, terminology, and concepts essential to studying the genre. While available to the beginner, the Encyclopedia is aimed at a wider, more experienced audience. Its goal is to assist specialists, graduate students, and teachers who are working in fields ancillary to their areas of expertise, and also to help the interested general reader looking for detailed, reliable information. As the first reference source entirely devoted to the global history, theory, form of the novel, the Encyclopedia offers extensive coverage of advanced concepts in those areas. Given that no consensus exists on what constitutes a “novel,” the editors had to consider the scope of this project carefully. Novels, we thought, ought to be in prose, and yet we have important novels that use verse (Jean Toomer) and others written entirely in verse (Elizabeth Barrett Browning). Novels should at least have a narrative, and yet we have novels without narrative (Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras). We also have novels without characters (Samuel Beckett), novels that are not fiction (Truman Capote), and countless novels that include one or all of these elements at some point within them. Today, the closest scholars come to a consensus is perhaps the ... log in or subscribe to read full text