E-Book Overview
Nearly as global in its ambition and sweep as its subject, Franco Moretti's The Novel is a watershed event in the understanding of the first truly planetary literary form. A translated selection from the epic five-volume Italian Il Romanzo (2001-2003), The Novel' s two volumes are a unified multiauthored reference work, containing more than one hundred specially commissioned essays by leading contemporary critics from around the world. Providing the first international comparative reassessment of the novel, these essential volumes reveal the form in unprecedented depth and breadth--as a great cultural, social, and human phenomenon that stretches from the ancient Greeks to today, where modernity itself is unimaginable without the genre.
By viewing the novel as much more than an aesthetic form, this landmark collection demonstrates how the genre has transformed human emotions and behavior, and the very perception of reality. Historical, statistical, and formal analyses show the novel as a complex literary system, in which new forms proliferate in every period and place.
Volume 1: History, Geography, and Culture, looks at the novel mostly from the outside, treating the transition from oral to written storytelling and the rise of narrative and fictionality, and covering the ancient Greek novel, the novel in premodern China, the early Spanish novel, and much else, including readings of novels from around the world.
These books will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literature.
E-Book Content
THE
Novel
Edited by Franco Moretti Editorial Board: Ernesto Franco, Fredric Jameson, Abdelfattah Kilito, Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, and Mario Vargas Llosa
VOLUME 1 H I S T O RY, G E O G R A P H Y, A N D C U LT U R E VOLUME 2 FORMS AND THEMES
THE
Novel VOLUME 1 H I S T O R Y, G E O G R A P H Y, A N D C U LT U R E
EDITED BY
Franco Moretti
Princeton University Press PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright 2006 © by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY This book is a selection from the original five-volume work, published in Italian under the title Il romanzo, copyright © 2001–2003 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Turin. Citations in these essays reflect the substantive content of those in the Italian edition. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Romanzo. English. Selections. The novel / edited by Franco Moretti. p. cm. A selection from the original five-volume work, published in Torino by G. Einaudi editore, c2001–c2003. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: v. 1. History, geography, and culture — v. 2. Forms and themes. ISBN-13: 978-0-691-04947-2 (cl : v. 1 : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-691-04947-5 (cl : v. 1 : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-691-04948-9 (cl : v. 2 : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-691-04948-3 (cl : v. 2 : alk. paper) 1. Fiction—History and criticism. I. Moretti, Franco, 1950– II. Title. PN3321.R66 2006 809.3—dc22 2005051473 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Simoncini Garamond Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Contents page ix
On The Novel
1.1. A S T R U G G L E F O R S P A C E JACK GOODY
3
From Oral to Written: An Anthropological Breakthrough in Storytelling LUIZ COSTA LIMA
37
The Control of the Imagination and the Novel HENRY Y. H. ZHAO
69
Historiography and Fiction in Chinese Culture WALTER SITI
94
The Novel on Trial
1.2. P O LY G E N E S I S TOMAS HÄGG
125