Studying the Novel

How do literary critics distinguish between 'story' and 'plot', between a symbol and an image, or between 'tone' and 'mood'? How do we define 'realism', 'modernism', and 'postmodernism'? What do narrative theorists mean by 'frequency' and 'distance'? Studying the Novel provides answers to these questions and many others in a way that is readable and entertaining without being simplistic. This is the revised and updated sixth edition of Jeremy Hawthorn's standard introduction to the novel, first published in 1985. Widely acclaimed for its erudition and accessibility, Studying the Novel is the essential guide to the concepts and approaches central to understanding the novel. It is a must-read for students of literature from first year undergraduate to Masters level and it will provide an invaluable primer for those in reading groups wishing to take their appreciation of the novel to new levels. The sixth edition has been updated to include discussion of new developments in narrative theory, especially those associated with 'rhetorical narratologists' such as James Phelan. It offers an expanded treatment of more recent fiction and of the short story and the novella, and it considers the problematic area of fictional and semi-fictional works based on real events such as the Nazi holocaust.

Jeremy Hawthorn is Professor of British Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.