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In an exciting and important book... The theoretical chapters are a model of elegantly styled accommodation; yet they brook no fudging of the issues, no comfortable ambiguities - Modern Fiction Studies The Transformation of the English Novel, 1890-1930: Studies in Hardy, Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Forster and Woolf is a provocative exploration of a crucial period in the development of the English novel, integrating critical theory, historical background and sophisticated close reading. Divided into two major sections, the first shows how historical and contextual material is essential for developing powerful readings. The second section is theoretical and speaks of the transformation in the way that we read and think about authors, readers, characters and form in the light of recent theory, offering an alternative to the deconstructive and Marxist trends in literary studies.
List of contents
Acknowledgements - Preface to the Second Edition - Introduction - PART ONE - 'I Was the World in Which I Walked': the Transformation of the British Novel - The Narrator as Character in Hardy's Major Fiction - Beginnings and Endings in Hardy's Major Fiction - Speaking of Paul Morel: Voice, Unity, and Meaning in Sons andRR Lovers - Lawrence's Quest in The Rainbow - The Originality of E.M. Forster - PART TWO - The Case for Humanistic Formalism - Modes of Literary Inquiry: a Primer for Humanistic Formalism - Reading Conrad's Lord Jim: Reading Texts, Reading Livesyy - 'Tell Us in Plain Words': an Introduction to Reading Joyce's Ulysses - Reading Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse - Selected Bibliography - Index
