Reading the modern European novel since 1900 : a critical study of major fiction from Proust's Swann's way to Ferrante's Neapolitan tetralogy / Daniel R. Schwarz.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Schwarz, Daniel R., author.

Series:

• Reading the novel.
• Reading the Novel

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• European fiction--20th century--History and criticism.
• European fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (365 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Hoboken, New Jersey ; Chichester, England : Wiley Blackwell, 2018.

Summary:

An exploration of the modern European novel from a renowned English literature scholar Reading the Modern European Novel since 1900 is an engaging, in-depth examination of the evolution of the modern European novel. Written in Daniel R. Schwarz's precise and highly readable style, this critical study offers compelling discussions on a wide range of major works since 1900 and examines recurring themes within the context of significant historical events, including both World Wars and the Holocaust. The author cites important developments in the evolution of the modern novel and explores how these paradigmatic works of fiction reflect intellectual and cultural history, including developments in painting and cinema. Schwarz focuses on narrative complexity, thematic subtlety, and formal originality as well as how novels render historical events and cultural developments Discussing major works by Proust, Camus, Mann, Kafka, Grass, di Lampedusa, Bassani, Kertesz, Pamuk, Kundera, Saramago, Muller and Ferrante, Schwarz explores how these often experimental masterworks pay homage to the their major predecessors-discussed in Schwarz's ground-breaking Reading the European Novel to 1900 -even while proposing radical departures from realism in their approach to time and space, their testing the limits of language, and their innovative ways of rendering the human psyche. Written for teachers and students by a highly-acclaimed scholar and including valuable study questions, Reading the Modern European Novel since 1900 offers a guide for a deeper understanding of how these original modern masters respond to both the past and present.

Contents:

• Intro
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Also by Daniel R. Schwarz
• Chapter 1 Introduction: The Novel After 1900
• Basic Premises
• What is Modernism?
• The Role of History in Shaping Fiction
• Human Choices
• The Complexity of Modernist Texts
• Principles of Selection
• Translations
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Chapter 2 Cultural Crisis: Decadence and Desire in Mann's Death in Venice (1912)
• The Author in the Text: Mann and Aschenbach
• Cultural Decadence and Enervation
• The Death Motif
• Aschenbach's Doubles: The Repressed Self Plays Back
• Seductive Beauty, Corrupting Pleasure: Venice and Aschenbach's Illicit Love
• Aschenbach's Use of Classical Contexts
• Aschenbach's Transformation and Demise
• Study Questions for Death in Venice
• Chapter 3 Proust's Swann's Way (1913) and the Novel of Sensibility: Memory, Obsession, and Consciousness
• What Kind of Fiction Did Proust Write?
• Proust's Style
• "Combray 1": The Significance of the Opening Pages
• Multiple Selves
• Combray 2
• Swann
• Why Does the Narrator Need to Tell Swann's Story?
• Part III: The Narrator's Obsession with Gilberte
• Study Questions for Swann's Way
• Chapter 4 The Metamorphosis (1915): Kaf ka's Noir Challenge to Realism
• The Kafka Universe
• Kafka's Jewishness
• Kafka's World: The Trial and "In the Penal Colony"
• The Metamorphosis
• How The Metamorphosis Begins
• Metamorphosis as Transformation and Transvaluation
• Study Questions for The Metamorphosis
• Chapter 5 Camus's Indifferent, Amoral, and Godless Cosmos: The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947) as Existential Novels
• Introduction
• Camus's The Stranger (1942)
• Historical Context
• The Stranger: Part One
• Meursault's Literary Ancestors
• Social Contexts for Meursault's Behavior.
• The Stranger: Part Two
• Afterword
• Study Questions for The Stranger
• The Plague
• What Kind of Fiction is The Plague?
• The Onset of the Plague
• The Plague as Allegory
• The Human Drama: Rieux as Protagonist and Narrator
• The Human Drama: Choice
• Study Questions for The Plague
• Chapter 6 Why Giorgio Bassani Matters: The Elegiac Imagined World of Bassani and the Jews of Ferrara
• Introduction: Making the Case for Bassani's Stature
• Bassani as Italian-Jewish Writer: Why History Matters
• The Jewish Community in Ferrara
• What Kind of Fiction Did Bassani Write?
• "A Plaque on Via Mazzini": A Story about Jewish Deportation and a Lone Single Return
• Bassani's Psychological Realism
• The Garden of the Finzi-Continis as Holocaust Text
• Bassani's Last Novel: The Heron
• Bassani the Modernist
• Study Questions for the Fiction of Giorgio Bassani
• Chapter 7 The Novel as Elegy: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard (1958)
• Sicily as Character
• Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina
• Tancredi
• The Penultimate Chapter
• The Ending
• Decadence
• The Narrative Voice
• Study Questions for The Leopard
• Chapter 8 Günter Grass's The Tin Drum (1959): Reconfiguring European History as Fable
• The Autobiographical Element
• What Kind of Fiction is The Tin Drum?
• Magic Realism and the Uncanny
• Allegory and the Uncanny
• The Tin Drum and German Expressionism
• Grass's Historiography: Oskar, Hitler, and the German Nation
• The Rise of Nazism: The Chapter Entitled "Faith Hope Love"
• The Function of Oskar
• Oskar's Divided Self: The Paradigms of Goethe and Rasputin
• The Relationship Between the Personal and Political: Oskar's Drumming and Glass‐shattering Screams.
• How The Tin Drum Begins: Oskar as a Self‐Dramatizing Narrator‐Protagonist
• Book Three: Grass's Satiric Visions of Post‐War Germany
• Resistant Reading: The Tin Drum's Failure to Render the Holocaust
• Afterword: The Film of The Tin Drum
• Study Questions for The Tin Drum
• Chapter 9 Imre Kertész's Fatelessness (1975): Rendering the Holocaust as a Present Tense Event
• The Relevance of Fatelessness
• The Artistry of Fatelessness
• How Fatelessness Begins: Entering Georg's World
• Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Zeitz, and Back to Buchenwald
• Return to Budapest: Fatelessness within History's Fateful Web
• Study Questions for Fatelessness
• Chapter 10 Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984): History as Fate
• The Paradoxical Concepts of Lightness and Weight
• Tomas and Tereza
• Sabina
• The Political Theme
• The Narrator Wearing the Mask of Author
• Kundera's Concept of Form in The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Study Questions for The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Chapter 11 Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989): Rewriting History, Reconfiguring Lives
• Saramago's Style: Innovative, Imaginative, Idiosyncratic
• How the Concept of the Siege Functions
• Historical Contexts
• Reconfiguring History
• Historiography
• Narrative Form
• Raimundo Silva
• The Mutual Siege on Affections: How and Why Maria Sara and Silva Find One Another
• The Crucial Telephone Conversation
• Study Questions for The History of the Siege of Lisbon
• Chapter 12 Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red (1998): Cultural Conflict in Sixteenth‐Century Istanbul and its Modern Implications
• Thematic Issues: Ottoman Miniatures versus European Art
• Pamuk's Aesthetic.
• Pamuk's Originality: Transgressive Form in My Name is Red
• Shekure
• The Murder Suspects
• Religious Fanaticism
• The Murderer's Psychology
• Historical Implications
• Conclusion: Notes toward a Resistant Reading
• Study Questions for My Name is Red
• Chapter 13 Herta Müller's The Hunger Angel (2009): A Hunger for Life, A Hunger for Words
• Historical Background
• The Title
• Leo's Narration as Bildungsroman Manqué
• Parallels to Holocaust Narratives
• Words
• How The Hunger Angel Begins
• The Labor Camp
• Hunger
• Leo's Imagination
• The Parabolic Function of Characters
• Leo's Return: Dissonance and Homosexuality
• My Resistant Reading
• Study Questions for The Hunger Angel
• Chapter 14 Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet: Women Discovering Their Voices in a Violent and Sexist Male Society
• What Kind of Fiction is Ferrante Writing?
• Radical Disruption: Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment (2002)
• Social Class and Class Satire
• Naples
• Form and Style: The Shape of the Narrative
• Form: Opening
• Form: Epilogue
• Elena and Lila's Relationship and Their Struggle for Freedom in a Patriarchal Society
• Elena as Author
• The Author in the Text, The Author as the Text
• The Concept of Authorial Textuality
• Ferrante as Authorial Presence?
• Anita Raja aka Elena Ferrante
• My Reservations
• Study Questions for Ferrante's Neapolitan Tetralogy
• Selected Bibliography (Including Works Cited)
• Primary Works
• Selected Bibliography and Critical Works
• Index
• EULA.

Notes:

• Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.
• Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

• 9781118693414
• 1118693418
• 9781118680667
• 1118680669
• 9781118680650
• 1118680650

OCLC:

1029233757