The Novel-Essay, 1884-1947 [Hardcover]

The novel-essay emerged in France, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and reached its highest formal complexity in Austria and Germany, during the interwar period. Here, Ercolino argues that it is crucial for a renovated understating of the history of the novel in modernity.Introduction PART I 1. Beyond Naturalist Aesthetics 2. The Critique of Modern Rationality 3. The Emergence of the Novel-Essay PART II 1. A Morphological Changeover 2. Mimicry 3. Dialectical Strains PART III 1. Philosophical Mimesis 2. Totality and the Grand Style 3. The Tear of History PART IV: FORM AND IDEOLOGY  Works Cited

The Novel-Essay is . . . a necessary step not just to understand the crisis of modernity or to study the premises of the ideology of postmodernism it is a chapter of the history of the novel which will allow us to understand the development of our society through the mirror of literary forms. - Los Angeles Review of Books

Bold and well-argued, Ercolino's book focuses on the novel-essay, a genre that emerged following the great crisis of the epistemological and symbolic apparatuses of modernity . . . An exceptionally gifted specialist in the history and theory of the novel, Ercolino steps forward dauntlessly. His book is compact and dense . . . Ercolino is a scholar of enviable brilliance. - Remo Ceserani, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, University of Bologna, Italy, Alias domenica Il manifesto

In an unusual combination, Ercolino is highly skilled at both close- and far-reading. His readers will appreciate the book's readable prose, its compressed argumentation, and its smooth synthesis of complex and varied discourses. He deftly analyzes the relationship between the novel-essay and Zolian naturalism, Cartesian rationality, the Bildungsroman, and philosophical mimesis. He demonstrates a deep understanding of the literary and philosophical landscape in modern Europe and includes even the most colã(