"The Present and Future States of Novel Criticism": A Hopeful Overview

Abstract

In 1967, the journal Novel began publication with the goal (articulated in a later collection of essays) of moving Towards a Poetics of Fiction. Both the publication and its goal were accurate signs that the novel was becoming a widely and intensely studied, as well as a widely and pleasurably read, kind of literature. In 1985, it is easy to forget how recently the novel has risen to academic respectability. But not so very long ago novels were to be avidly read by graduate students, but not taught in graduate courses or written about in dissertations, and the field of academic publishing featured far more work on poetry than on fiction.