The Chapter : A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century / Nicholas Dames.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dames, Nicholas, 1970- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading--History.

Books and reading.

Genre:

Literary criticism

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 370 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2023]

Summary:

"The book first examines what a chapter is, then discusses its emergence and function in ancient writings, scripture, legal texts, and other nonfictional forms, and finally traces the role of the chapter in the novel. Beyond a material history of the chapter, however, this book reads various manifestations of the chapter as a guide to the way writers have imagined time, and how the metaphor of the chapter maintains a ubiquitous and structuring presence in our lives and experiences. As Dames observes, "We 'start a new chapter' in our lives with dread or excitement; we 'close that chapter of my life' with regret or relief ... This book can then be thought of as a study of the long, slow coming into being of the conditions of the chapter metaphor and its persistent grip on how we speak and think of change, transition, boundaries in time." Deeply reserached and engagingly written, this book presents a fascinating history of a form often taken for granted but central to the experience of reading"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Part I. Envisioning the Chapter

Introduction

Ante Chapter: On Segmented Time

1. In Which an Object Is Proposed for Analysis

Part II. Two Millennia of Capitulation, from Heading to Unit

2. On the Shape of the Classical Heading (the Threshold)

3. Concerning the Division of the Gospels (the Abstract Syncopation)

4. How Fifteenth-Century Remediators Did Their Work (the Cut, the Fade)

Part III. Dividing Time in, and beyond, the Novel

5. Attitudes of the Early Novel Chapter (the Postural, the Elongated)

6. The Repertoire of the Chapter circa 1865 (the Tacit)

7. The Days of Our Novelistic Lives (the Circadian)

8. The Poignancy of Sequence (the Antique-Diminutive)

Post Chapter: The Future of a Convention (1970-)

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

PROSE Award, Literature, 2024

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691253633

0691253633

OCLC:

1390923221