Narrative Middles: Navigating the Nineteenth-Century British Novel ed. by Caroline Levine, Mario Ortiz-Robles (review)

Abstract

LEVINE, CAROLINE and MARIO ORTIZ-ROBLES, eds. Narrative Middles: Navigating Nineteenth-Century British Novel. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2011.257 pp. $54.95. In Narrative Middles, editors Caroline Levine and Mario Ortiz-Robles assemble nine chapter-length studies of canonical nineteenth-century novels in an attempt promote neoformalism, a blend of historical and narratological approaches novel as a genre. They argue that by studying (broadly defined) of these novels, postmillennial critics can find new insights lacking in previous studies, which they claim have been heavily invested in beginnings and endings. Those older approaches, they argue, have played themselves out (2). Their book, instead, responds several recent theoretical efforts in narratology, most specifically Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practice (2008), Narrative Dynamics (2002), and Reading for Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (1992). At first glance, a book devoted middle of novels seems be weak scaffolding for such weighty concerns, but introduction itself is so clear and well organized that premise generally works. The book offers interesting and insightful studies of novels by Jane Austen (twice), George Eliot, Henry James, Anne Bronte, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, and William Morris. The essays are grouped into three sections (centers; repetitions; and suspensions) that explore different aspects of middle. Levine and Ortiz-Robles identify three kinds of cultural and social match their formalistic concerns: middle class; nineteenth-century Britain's centrist reform program (7); and Britain as the hub of empire (7). In their introduction, editors (who also contribute one chapter each book) situate their exploration of in body of Western thought, literature, and theory, setting forth blend formalist readings with sociopolitical history (3). They proclaim two key objectives in this book: to contribute a long-standing gap in theory (5) and show that narrative middles are an ideal site for convergence of formalist and historicist methods (7). It would be difficult say that all nine essays in this book accomplish all objectives, but they do identify an unusual topic, define it variously, and apply that definition well-known Victorian texts. …