Narrative Crossings: Theory and Pragmatics of Prose Fiction, and: Individuations: The Novel as Dissent, and: Semiotic and Structuralist Analyses of Fiction: An Introduction and A Survey of Applications (review)

1989 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-374
Author(s):  
James J. Sosnoski
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction

Hierogamy versus Wedlock: Types of Marriage Plots and Their Relationship to Genres of Prose Fiction

PMLA ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. 900-913 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn J. Hinz
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Wuthering Heights ◽  
Mythic Narrative

Because we conventionally think of marriage in social and moral terms, we tend to regard it as a subject practically indigenous to the novel. Hence a work like Wuthering Heights poses problems for the traditional genre critic, since while this work is concerned with marriage its conventions are not those of the novel. The usual tactic is to call Brontë's work a “romance,” but marriage is not compatible with the “romance” as the term is usually defined. It is thus important to recognize that there are two types of marriage plots in prose fiction: one indigenous to the novel, that might be called “wedlock”; another, indigenous to works like Wuthering Heights, that may be called “hierogamy.” Thus, works like Wuthering Heights should not be classified as “displaced novels” but as examples of an autonomous genre which for the present might be designated “mythic narrative.”

Pragmatic patterns in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stubbs
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
Linguistic Methods ◽  
Literary Linguistics

Abstract In an influential book on literary linguistics, first published in 1981 and revised in 2007, Geoffrey Leech and his colleague Mick Short discuss linguistic methods of analysing long texts of prose fiction. This article develops their arguments in two ways: (1) by relating them to classic puzzles in the philosophy of science; and (2) by illustrating them with a computer-assisted study of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. This case study shows that software can identify a linguistic feature of the novel which is central to its major themes, but which is unlikely to be consciously noticed by human readers. Quantitative data on the novel show that it contains a large number of negatives. Their function is often to deny something which would normally be expected, and therefore to express the protagonists’ distrust of their own senses in the extraordinary world in which they find themselves.

Misreading Morrison, Mishearing Jazz: A Response to Toni Morrison's Jazz Critics

1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN MUNTON
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Jazz Age ◽  
Parallel Argument ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
Henry Louis Gates ◽  
Jazz Musician ◽  
Radical Revision

Toni Morrison's fiction, we have been repeatedly told, embodies features taken from jazz. Her books have a “jazzy prose style,” express a “jazz aesthetic,” or are “literary jazz.” Critics propose that jazz riffs can be found in her writing, and that she improvises in prose in a manner comparable to an improvising jazz musician. None of this seems to me to be true. To establish a relationship between music and prose fiction would be difficult under any circumstances. It is all the more difficult when the critics concerned show themselves to be unaware of the basic formal structures of jazz. The riff is foregrounded because it is the only feature of jazz that can be compared to prose (because both may include repetitions). It is a more serious objection that Rice, Small-McCarthy, Berrett, and others, including James A. Snead and Henry Louis Gates Jr., consistently ignore structure, harmony, and melody in favour of rhythm. The reason for this is that jazz rhythm can be traced back to its African origins, whereas structure, harmony, and melody require an engagement with European sources. Clearly, an ideology of authenticity is at work here. Yet a parallel argument is willing to relate Morrison's fiction to its European origins. For, if her novel Jazz is, as Rinaldo Walcott indicates, a rewriting of Scott Fitzgerald's version of the “Jazz Age,” then that rewriting or radical revision must occur by reference to a form – the novel – that originated in Europe and is (in the cited instance) a product of white America.

Charles Lamb's Insight Into the Nature of the Novel

PMLA ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-382
Author(s):  
Charles I. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Daniel Defoe ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Critical Essay ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Henry Mackenzie ◽  
External Events ◽  
Insight Into

Charles Lamb exhibited the same genial attitude toward books as toward people; he never expected too much of either, and was therefore seldom disappointed. This whimsical tolerance was especially evident in his reactions to prose fiction. He never went at a novel too seriously—with hammer and tongs, as we say; yet he could distinguish between the enduring works and the pulp. Moreover, he professed to like the same qualities in books as in people: individuality, personality, and even eccentricity. In 1821 he disclaimed a taste for the external events in narrative fiction, contrasting his attitude with that of his sister: “Narrative teases me. I have little concern with the progress of events. She must have a story.... The fluctuations of fortune in fiction ... and almost in real life ... have ceased to interest, or to operate but dully upon me. Out of the way humours and opinions—heads with some diverting twist in them—the oddities of authorship please me most” (ii, 75). There is, however, ample evidence that Lamb read widely in prose fiction and enjoyed the works of the great eighteenth-century masters—Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. He also was acquainted with the writings of Sterne, Goldsmith, Henry Mackenzie, Robert Paltock, Aleman, Cervantes, Jane and Maria Porter, Godwin, Scott, and many figures of less note, including the Minerva Press offerings. As Lamb himself put it, “Defoe was always my darling” (i, 524). In 1829, at the request of his friend Walter Wilson, Lamb wrote a critical essay on Defoe's secondary novels for Wilson's book Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe.4

Two Treatments of a Subject: Proust's “La Regarder Dormir” and Valéry's La Dormeuse

PMLA ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 900-909
Author(s):  
Henry A. Grubbs
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Present Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent Survey ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Figure Of Speech ◽  
Late Nineteenth

A critical cliché often heard today is that Proust was fundamentally a poet rather than a novelist. The historians of literature and the critics do not put it quite as crudely as that, but their remarks frequently permit such an assumption on the part of the reader. Thus the Castex and Surer manual, in its twentieth-century volume, finds in “toute l'œuvre [de Proust] un climat d'intense Poesie” (p. 82). And Georges Cattaui, in his recent survey of the present status of Proust, though he does not in so many words call Proust a poet or his novel a poem, does say that Proust is above all the heir “de Nerval, de Baudelaire, de Mallarmé,—de ces poètes qui lui ont enseigné l'art de transfigurer les choses, l'art de délivrer la beauté prisonnière … ” Now all this is true if it is merely taken as a vivifying figure of speech, if it merely means that Proust was not a realistic novelist, and that he shows the influence of the great French poets of the late nineteenth century, or that, to use a convenient term, he was a symbolist, like his contemporaries, Claudel, Gide, and Valéry. But it has so often been said in our time that the twentieth century has seen the breaking down of the distinctions between the novel and poetry, that it seems to me useful to demonstrate, by studying two treatments of the same subject, one that of a novelist, Proust, the other that of a poet, Valéry, that there remains a fundamental and profound difference between the intent and the method of prose fiction and of poetry, at least the type that is today called “pure” poetry.

scholarly journals Linguistic Choices in Hamid’s Moth Smoke: A Transitivity Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 303
Author(s):  
Hafiz Muhammad Qasim ◽  
Mubina Talaat ◽  
Qamar Khushi ◽  
Musarrat Azher
Keyword(s):  
Literary Text ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Relational Processes ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Verbal Processes

The present study is aimed at an investigation of how meanings are construed in a literary text. The main theoretical framework employed for the data analysis was transitivity, which finds its roots in Halliday’s (1994) Systemic Functional Grammar. 21 texts from Hamid’s novel, Moth Smoke (MS) were selected as data. A sample size of 1100 complex clause sentences containing different processes, participants and circumstances was drawn for analysis. The focus of the study was the identification of transitivity patterns associated with the main characters of the novel following Simpson (2004) who viewed it “useful indicator of character in prose fiction” (p. 119). The findings of transitivity constructions showed that all types of processes were found in MS. Based on the rank of frequency, material processes were computed the most frequent processes. They did have frequency of occurrence as (1076=51.45%). The projection of mental processes was (13.91%) in the second position. The verbal processes were (11.23%), relational processes (19.75%) while the lowest projection was found in behavioural (2.63%) and existential (0.86%) processes. Male characters were ascribed with more material and verbal processes while females were drawn as having mental and attributive process clauses. The current study concluded that transitivity options can function as a useful analytical tool in the analysis of a literary text.

The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Book Production ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Insight Into

Although the emergence of the English novel is generally regarded as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, this is the first book to be published professing to cover the ‘eighteenth-century English novel’ in its entirety. This Handbook surveys the development of the English novel during the ‘long’ eighteenth century—in other words, from the later seventeenth century right through to the first three decades of the nineteenth century when, with the publication of the novels of Jane Austen and Walter Scott, ‘the novel’ finally gained critical acceptance and assumed the position of cultural hegemony it enjoyed for over a century. By situating the novels of the period which are still read today against the background of the hundreds published between 1660 and 1830, this Handbook covers not only those ‘masters and mistresses’ of early prose fiction—such as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Scott, and Austen—who are still acknowledged to be seminal figures in the emergence and development of the English novel, but also the significant number of recently rediscovered novelists who were popular in their own day. At the same time, its comprehensive coverage of cultural contexts not considered by any existing study, but which are central to the emergence of the novel—such as the book trade and the mechanics of book production, copyright and censorship, the growth of the reading public, the economics of culture both in London and in the provinces, and the reprinting of popular fiction after 1774—offers unique insight into the making of the English novel.

scholarly journals Representativeness in Corpora of Literary Texts: Introducing the C18P Project

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Iris Gemeinböck
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Linguistic Research

Currently there are very few specialised corpora of literary texts that are tailored to the needs of literary critics who are interested in corpus stylistic analyses of prose fiction. Many existing corpora including literary texts were compiled for linguistic research interests and are often unsuitable for corpus stylistic purposes. The paper addresses three of the main problems: the absence of labelling of the texts for literary genre, the use of extracts, and the prevalence of linguistic periodisation schemes. C18P is a corpus of prose fiction designed specifically to address these issues. It traces the early development of the novel from 1700 up until the Victorian era. It can, for instance, be used for an analysis of the characteristic linguistic features of individual literary genres and forms. The following paper introduces the design of the corpus as well as some of its potential uses.

The Rise of the Novel in Britain, 1660–1780

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Seager
Keyword(s):  
Print Culture ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Tristram Shandy ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
Moll Flanders

Every premise of the phrase “the rise of the novel” has been assailed in recent years. “The rise” suggests a single, uniform phenomenon, which scholars contest. If that phenomenon is a “rise,” it sounds inevitable and progressive in teleological terms, which critics find problematic. “The novel” implies we are dealing with a single genre, and if that genre is called “novel” we may be ignoring things that do not fit a preconception or are using a historically problematic term. For these reasons, this bibliography addresses the rise of the novel in Britain, during the period 1660–1780, aiming for greater specificity of place and time. Notwithstanding their problematizing of “the rise of the novel,” literary historians remain interested in the fact that for Shakespeare and Spenser prose fiction was barely an option, whereas for Austen and Scott two centuries later it was an obvious one. Drama and poetry had not disappeared, so what changed? The scholarship included in this bibliography takes different approaches to the problem. Some begin from history, linking the advent of the novel to social, religious, economic, or political changes. Others focus on issues intrinsic to literature, like genre. What genres did the novel develop from or alongside: how and why? How did it develop as a form, such as in terms of narrative style or characterization techniques? Though commentators starting in the 18th century sought to explain the new species of writing, and this continued during the 19th and early 20th centuries, this bibliography focuses on work following Ian Watt’s influential The Rise of the Novel (1957). Therefore, it does not cover pre-20th-century studies. Important novels in the tradition include: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) and Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister; Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722); Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess (1719–1720) and Betsy Thoughtless (1751); Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740–1741) and Clarissa (1747–1748); Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749); Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748) and Humphry Clinker (1771); Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) and A Sentimental Journey (1768); and Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782). For the reader new to this topic, I would recommend beginning with Watt, before advancing to Brean Hammond and Shaun Regan’s Making the Novel (2006) and Patricia Meyer Spacks’s Novel Beginnings (2006). Next, J. Paul Hunter’s Before Novels (1990), Jane Spencer’s The Rise of the Woman Novelist (1986), Ira Konigsberg’s Narrative Technique in the English Novel (1985), and Michael McKeon’s The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 (1987) will give a rigorous grounding in a range of approaches through genre, formalism, feminism, historicism, and print culture, so the reader may then pursue directions such as postcolonialism, individual genres (like romance), or particular contextual factors. Nicholas Seager’s The Rise of the Novel: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (2012), alongside this bibliography, will make for a useful companion to your reading in criticism. Keep in mind that understanding the 18th-century novel will be best achieved by reading as many 18th-century novels as possible.

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