Michael McKeon ( - )
Related: history of fiction - literary criticism - literature - novel
Biography
The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 (1987) - Michael McKeon
The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 (1987) - Michael McKeon [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Library Journal
This may well be the most important study of the development of prose fiction in England since Ian Watt's classic Rise of the Novel (1957), on which it builds. Like Watt's study, it examines philosophical changes ("Questions of Truth") and social-cultural changes ("Questions of Virtue") in the early modern period to conclude that the novel "emerged in early modern England as a new literary fiction designed to engage the social and ethical problems the established literary fictions could no longer mediate." It also offers provocative readings of several 17th- and 18th-century works. The Marxist/deconstructionist language will be difficult for undergraduates, but the astute philosophical, cultural, historical, and literary observations will fascinate and enlighten any scholar of the early modern period. --Joseph Rosenblum, English Dept., Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --via Amazon.com
—New York Review of Books
"A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See also: British literature - 1600s literature - 1700s literature - novel
Theory of the Novel : A Historical Approach (2000) - Michael McKeon
Theory of the Novel : A Historical Approach (2000) - Michael McKeon [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Michael McKeon, author of "The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740," here assembles a collection of influential essays on the theory of the novel. Carefully chosen selections from Frye, Benjamin, Livi-Strauss, Lukacs, Bakhtin, and other prominent theorists explore the historical significance of the novel as a genre, from its early beginnings to its modern variations in the postmodern novel and postcolonial novel.
Offering a generous selection of key theoretical texts for students and scholars alike, "Theory of the Novel" also presents a provocative argument for studying the genre. In his introduction to the volume and in headnotes to each section, McKeon argues that genre theory and history provide the best approach to understanding the novel. All the selections in this anthology date from the twentieth century--most from the last forty years--and represent the attempts of different theorists, and different theoretical schools, to describe the historical stages of the genre's formal development. --from the publisher
See also: literary theory - novel