Why the Novel Matters: A Postmodern Perplex

Abstract

Acknowledgments Mark Spilka and Caroline McCracken-Flesher Preliminaries I. The New Series Poetics Panel Marianna Torgovnick OThe Present and Future States of Novel CriticismO: A Hopeful Overview Mark Spilka OStill Towards a Poetics of Fiction?O: No--And Then Again Yes Don H. Bialostosky BoothOs Rhetoric, BakhtinOs Dialogics and the Future of Novel Criticism Bernard Duyfhuizen Mimesis, Authority, and Belief in Narrative Poetics: Toward a Transmission Theory for a Poetics of Fiction Richard Pearce OThe Present and Future States of Novel CriticismO: Our Two-Headed Profession Daniel R. Schwarz The Case for a Humanistic Poetics II. Four Precursors Roy Pascal Narrative Fictions and Reality: A Comment on Frank KermodeOs The Sense of an Ending Terrence Doody Don Quixote, Ulysses, and the Idea of Realism Nancy Armstrong The Rise of Feminine Authority in the Novel Steven Cohan Figures beyond the Text: A Theory of Readable Character in the Novel III. The Conference The Editors Why the Novel Matters: A Postmodern Perplex Keynote Address David Lodge The Novel Now: Theories and Practices The Novel as Subjective Mode Leo Bersani FlaubertOs Encyclopedism Kaja Sivlerman Too Early/Too Late: Subjectivity and the Primal Scene in Henry James Alan Singer The Voice of History/The Subject of the Novel The Novel as Ethical Paradigm Patricia Meyer Spacks The Novel as Ethical Paradigm Robert Scholes The Novel as Ethical Paradigm? Daniel R. Schwarz The Ethics of Reading: The Case for Pluralistic and Transactional Reading The Novel as Cultural Discourse George Levine The Novel as Scientific Discourse: The Example of Conrad Khachig Tololyan Discoursing with Culture: The Novel as Interlocutor Charles Altieri Finnegans Wake as Modernist Historiography The Novel as Therapeutic Discourse Joseph Gold The Function of Fiction: A Biological Model Murray M. Schwartz Beyond Fantasy: The Novel as Play Susan Rubin Suleiman Playing and Modernity Discussion The Novel as Psychosocial Design Peter Brooks The Tale vs. The Novel Robert Caserio Mobility and Masochism: Christine Brooke-Rose and J.G. Ballard Nancy K. Miller Feminist Writing and the History of the Novel The Novel as Narrative Process Rachel Blau DuPlessis Feminist Narrative in Virginia Woolf Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth Conspicuous Construction: or, Kristeva, Nabokov, and the Anti-Realist Critique The Windup Session Marianna Torgovnick Did We Meet Your Expectations? Discussion Contributors Index