How Novels WorkOUP Oxford, 2008/02/14 - 368 ページ Never has contemporary fiction been more widely discussed and passionately analysed; recent years have seen a huge growth in the number of reading groups and in the interest of a non-academic readership in the discussion of how novels work. Drawing on his weekly Guardian column, 'Elements of Fiction', John Mullan examines novels mostly of the last ten years, many of which have become firm favourites with reading groups. He reveals the rich resources of novelistic technique, setting recent fiction alongside classics of the past. Nick Hornby's adoption of a female narrator is compared to Daniel Defoe's; Ian McEwan's use of weather is set against Austen's and Hardy's; Carole Shield's chapter divisions are likened to Fanny Burney's. Each section shows how some basic element of fiction is used. Some topics (like plot, dialogue, or location) will appear familiar to most novel readers; others (metanarrative, prolepsis, amplification) will open readers' eyes to new ways of understanding and appreciating the writer's craft. How Novels Work explains how the pleasures of novel reading often come from the formal ingenuity of the novelist. It is an entertaining and stimulating exploration of that ingenuity. Addressed to anyone who is interested in the close reading of fiction, it makes visible techniques and effects we are often only half-aware of as we read. It shows that literary criticism is something that all fiction enthusiasts can do. Contemporary novels discussed include: Monica Ali's Brick Lane; Martin Amis's Money; Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin; A.S. Byatt's Possession; Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club; J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace; Michael Cunningham's The Hours; Don DeLillo's Underworld; Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White; Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love; Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections; Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; Patricia Highsmith's Ripley under Ground; Alan Hollinghurst's The Spell; Nick Hornby's How to Be Good; Ian McEwan's Atonement; John le Carré's The Constant Gardener; Andrea Levy's Small Island; David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas; Andrew O'Hagan's Personality; Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red; Ann Patchett's Bel Canto; Ruth Rendell's Adam and Eve and Pinch Me; Philip Roth's The Human Stain; Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated; Carol Shields's Unless; Zadie Smith's White Teeth; Muriel Spark's Aiding and Abetting; Graham Swift's Last Orders; Donna Tartt's The Secret History; William Trevor's The Hill Bachelors; and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road . |
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5 ページ
... called 'literary fiction'. The point was not to recommend the chosen novel (though I did not choose any books that I did not either like or admire); the point was to take a book that was in the public current of attention and to see ...
... called 'literary fiction'. The point was not to recommend the chosen novel (though I did not choose any books that I did not either like or admire); the point was to take a book that was in the public current of attention and to see ...
10 ページ
... called 'sensation novels' of his day (exemplified by works like Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, 1859–60), and their habit of commencing with some startling incident. At the opening of his own novel Is He Popenjoy? (1878)—itself ...
... called 'sensation novels' of his day (exemplified by works like Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, 1859–60), and their habit of commencing with some startling incident. At the opening of his own novel Is He Popenjoy? (1878)—itself ...
16 ページ
... called Isabel Archer. This is not unimaginable, for Isabel is entirely the centre of the story, yet it would be to ... called William Golding that had been rejected by up to twenty other publishers, it was called Strangers from Within ...
... called Isabel Archer. This is not unimaginable, for Isabel is entirely the centre of the story, yet it would be to ... called William Golding that had been rejected by up to twenty other publishers, it was called Strangers from Within ...
18 ページ
... called Suspense. He also wrote a wonderful novella called Youth (1902), about not being young any more (which became the title of Coetzee's next novel after Disgrace). The title of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace is not exactly ironical, but ...
... called Suspense. He also wrote a wonderful novella called Youth (1902), about not being young any more (which became the title of Coetzee's next novel after Disgrace). The title of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace is not exactly ironical, but ...
30 ページ
... called fate,' declares their charismatic teacher, Julian (31). The prologue is a means by which Tartt turns psychology into fate. 'I'm afraid my students are never very interesting to me because I always know exactly what they are going ...
... called fate,' declares their charismatic teacher, Julian (31). The prologue is a means by which Tartt turns psychology into fate. 'I'm afraid my students are never very interesting to me because I always know exactly what they are going ...
目次
1 | |
9 | |
2 Narrating | 40 |
3 People | 79 |
4 Genre | 105 |
5 Voices | 127 |
6 Structure | 155 |
7 Detail | 189 |
8 Style | 213 |
9 Devices | 251 |
10 Literariness | 284 |
11 Ending | 303 |
Notes | 321 |
Select Bibliography | 327 |
Index | 337 |
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多く使われている語句
academic acters Austen become begins Blind Assassin Byatt called century chapter character’s characters Christopher Clarissa clichés Cloud Atlas Coleman comic Constant Gardener critics Cunningham’s Dalloway daughter David David Copperfield David Lodge death Defoe’s DeLillo dialogue Dickens disgrace Eliot English epigraph example Faber father feel fiction first-person free indirect speech genre gives head Henry James Human Stain husband imagine invented Jane Jane Austen Jane Eyre Jonathan kind language letters literary lives looks lover Lucan Middlemarch Minty murder mystery narrator narrator’s Nathan Nathan Zuckerman Nazneen never Nick novel novelist opening paragraph parataxis person plot present tense prose protagonist quotation reader recalls Reta Ripley Ripley’s Romance Roth’s satirical seems sense sentence Shields’s sometimes speak speech story talk tells things thoughts tion told Tom Jones truth Victorian villain voice wants wife woman Woolf’s words writing