Reading the European Novel to 1900

"Schwarz's study is chock full of judicious evaluation of characters, narrative devices, ethical commentary, and helpful information about historical and political contexts including the role of Napoleon, the rise of capitalism, trains, class divisions, transformation of rural life, and the struggle to define human values in a period characterized by debates between and among rationalism, spiritualism, and determinism. One experiences the pleasure of watching a master critic as he re-reads, savors, and passes on his hard-won wisdom about how we as humans read and why.
Daniel Morris, Professor of English, Purdue University

Written by one of literature's most esteemed scholars and critics, Reading the European Novel to 1900 is an engaging and in-depth examination of major works of the European novel from Cervantes' Don Quixote to Zola's Germinal. In Daniel R. Schwarz's inimitable style, which balances formal and historical criticism in precise, readable prose, this book offers close readings of individual texts with attention to each one's cultural and canonical context.

Major texts that he discusses: Cervantes' Don Quixote; Stendhal's The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma; Balzac's Père Goriot; Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education; Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov; Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina; and Zola's Germinal.

Schwarz examines the history and evolution of the novel during this period and defines each author's aesthetic, cultural, political, and historical significance. Incorporating important pedagogical suggestions and the latest research, this text provides accessible and lucid discussion of the European novel to 1900 for students, teachers, and general readers interested in the evolution of the novelistic form.

DANIEL R. SCHWARZ is Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, USA, where he has taught since 1968. He is regarded as among the world's leading critic scholars of the form, history, and meaning of the novel. He has written 18 books covering a wide variety of subjects from renowned studies of Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, and critical theory as well as the Holocaust and New York City culture. In recent years, he is the author of: Crises and Turmoil at the New York Times (2012; new paperback edition, 2014); In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century (Wiley Blackwell, 2008); Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890–1930 (Blackwell, 2004); How to Succeed in College and Beyond: The Art of Learning (Wiley Blackwell, 2016; Mandarin edition, Renmin, 2018); and Reading the Modertn European Novel since 1900 (Wiley Blackwell, 2017). He blogs regularly on the media and higher education for the Huffington Post and has lectured all over the world.

Acknowledgments ix

1 Introduction: The Odyssey of Reading Novels 1

2 Miguel de Cervantes’Don Quixote (1605, 1615): Inventing the Novel 25

3 Reading Stendhal’s The Red and the Black (1830) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839): Character and Caricature 55

1 “Perhaps”:The Red and the Black as Psychological Novel and Political Anatomy 56

2 The Charterhouse of Parma: Narrative as Energy, Reading as Play 69

4 Predatory BehaviorinBalzac’sP`ere Goriot (1835): Paris as a Trope for Moral Cannibalism 89

5 Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) and Sentimental Education (1869): The Aesthetic Novel 107

1 Madame Bovary: Literary Form Examining Provincial Manners and Desire 107

2 Briefly Discussing the Puzzles of Sentimental Education 124

6 ReadingDostoevsky’sNotes from Underground (1864) and Crime and Punishment (1866) 133

1 Notes from Underground: The Piano Plays Back 133

2 Crime and Punishment: Raskolnikov’s Descent and Rebirth 146

7 Hyperbole and Incongruity in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880): Excess and Turmoil as Modes of Being 171

8 Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869): The Novel as Historical Epic 203

9 Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877): Exploring Passions and Values in Nineteenth-Century Russia 231

10 Emile Zola’s Germinal (1885): The Aesthetics, Thematics, and Ideology of the Novel of Purpose 253

Selected Bibliography (IncludingWorks Cited) 273

Index 279

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