The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction

For at least 100 years now, novelists have experimented with ways to make fiction “modern”, to make it better able to reflect and resist the perils and pleasures of modernity. This book looks at how they have done so, tracing the evolution of the modern novel through the twentieth century, and providing a framework through which readers of all kinds can appreciate the significance of the genre.

Acknowledgments. Introduction: Modern How?. 1 When and Why: The Rise of the Modern Novel. 2 “What is Reality?”: The New Questions. 3 New Forms: Reshaping the Novel. 4 New Difficulties. 5 Regarding the Real World: Politics. 6 Questioning the Modern: Mid–Century Revisions. 7 Postmodern Replenishments. 8 Postcolonial Modernity. Conclusions. Notes. Index

Jesse Matz is Assistant Professor at Kenyon College. He is the author of Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics (2001) and winner of Harvard University′s Roslyn Abramson prize for excellence in teaching.

"What makes the 20th century novel modern? What relations to modernity make fiction experimental and new? Is the postmodern novel a fiction of exhaustion or the replenishment of modernism′s purpose? In this detailed and readable book, Jesse Matz offers useful answers to these questions and a guide to novels from Henry james to Zadie Smith." Elaine Showalter <!––end––> "Jesse Matz’s The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction is an ambitious and impressive study of twentieth–century, English–language novels from both sides of the Atlantic and beyond ... This appealingly written, jargon–free overview of the modern novel will certainly change the way I think about – and teach – the field." Brian W. Shaffer, Rhodes College <!––end––>