Arata S., Haley M., Hunter J.P., Wicke J. (eds.) A Companion to the English Novel

Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. — 497 p. — ISBN: 978-1-4051-9445-7, 9781118607220.Blackwell companions to literature and culture 155.This Companion is addressed to readers interested in the English novel and the many ways there are to think and write about it. Each of the twenty‐nine essays presumes a basic familiarity with the tradition of the English novel and an appetite for learning more, but none presumes the possession of any specialized knowledge. Collectively, the essays are informed by a vast body of scholarly and critical work while remaining accessible, lively, and intellectually engaging. Readers will acquire a sharp sense of some of the main lines of inquiry that have shaped criticism of the novel over the course of its still relatively brief history, but the essays also vibrantly testify to the innovation and diversity that marks the field at the present moment – as is only fitting for the study of a genre that itself has always been marked by innovation and diversity.As a glance at the table of contents reveals, the essays in this Companion are not arranged by chronology. Rather than thread essays along a time line, we have organized the volume topically in the belief that our contributors could cover more ground, pursue more original approaches, and cumulatively achieve a greater overall coherence if they were set loose from the requirements of a chronological survey. Without exception, the individual essays are informed by an awareness of history and chronology: arranging discrete events in meaningful sequences is one way novelists make sense of experience, and it is one way scholars make sense of the development of literary forms. But the volume’s alternative structure makes it possible for our contributors to be rigorously historical yet not constrained by the demands of “coverage” or by the need to canvass particular periods or centuries. Individually and in aggregate, then, the chapters seek to address the pivotal dimensions of the English novel both in time and across time, including its aesthetic and formal properties and its embedding in a variety of social and cultural contexts.