Genre and Extravagance in the Novel Lower Frequencies

This book addresses an anomaly in the novel as genre: the generic promise to readers--that "reading a novel" is a familiar and repeatable experience--is challenged by the extravagant exceptions to this rule. Furthermore, these exceptions (such as Moby-Dick, Ulysses, or To the Lighthouse) are sui generis, hybrid concoctions that cannot be said to be typical novels. The novel, then, as literary form, succeeds by extravagantly disregarding or even disavowing the protocols of its own genre. Examining a number of famous examples from Don Quixote to Nostromo, this book offers an anatomy of exceptions that illustrate the structural role of their exceptionality for the prestige of the novel as literary form.

Jed Rasula, Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor, the University of Georgia


Jed Rasula is Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia. He is author of nine scholarly books and three books of poetry, as well as co-editor of two anthologies. His research focuses on modernism across the arts, jazz history, modern and contemporary poetry, eco-poetics,
and esoteric language practices.