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Challenging prevailing theories that tie the origins of the novel to the ascendancy of "realism" and the "middle class," McKeon argues that this new genre arose in response to the profound instability of literary and social categories. Between 1600 and 1740, momentous changes took place in European attitudes toward truth in narrative and toward virtue in the individual and the social order. The novel emerged, McKeon contends, as a cultural instrument designed to engage the epistemological and social crises of the age.
List of contents
Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction to the Fifteenth Anniversary Edition Introduction: Dialectical Method in Literary History PART I QUESTIONS OF TRUTH Chapter One: The Destabilization of Generic Categories Chapter Two: The Evidence of the Senses: Secularization and Epistemological Crisis Chapter Three: Histories of the Individual PART II QUESTIONS OF VIRTUE Chapter Four: The Destabilization of Social Categories Chapter Five: Absolutism and Capitalist Ideology: The Volatility of Reform Chapter Six: Stories of Virtue PART III THE DIALECTICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE NOVEL Chapter Seven: Romance Transformations (I) : Cervantes and the Disenchantment of the World Chapter Eight: Romance Transformations (II) : Bunyan and Literalization of Allegory Chapter Nine: Parables of the Younger Son (I) : Defoe and the Naturalization of Desire Chapter Ten: Parables of the Younger Son (II) : Swift and the Containment of Desire Chapter Eleven: The Institutionalization of Conflict (I) : Richardson and the Domestication of Service Chapter Twelve: The Institutionalization of Conflict (II) : Fielding and the Instrumentality of Belief Conclusion Notes Index
About the author
Michael McKeon is a professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University. He is the author of
The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge, and the editor of
Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach.
Summary
The novel emerged, McKeon contends, as a cultural instrument designed to engage the epistemological and social crises of the age.
