Cambridge Companion To The French Novel, The

Description: This volume offers a unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries. In a series of essays, acknowledged experts discuss a variety of topics including nineteenth-century realism, women and fiction, popular fiction, experiment and innovation, war and the Holocaust, the Francophone novel, and postmodern fiction. They offer a challenging reassessment of major figures, while deliberately reading traditional views of literary history against the grain. Theoretical discussion is combined with close reading of texts and exploration of context, comparison with other genres and other literatures, and reference to novels from earlier periods. This companionable introduction includes a chronology and guide to further reading. From it emerges a strong sense of the vitality and energy of the modern French novel, and of the debates surrounding it. Table of Contents: Chronology; Note on literary prizes; Note on presentation; 1. On the novel and the writing of literary history Timothy Unwin; 2. Novels of testimony and the invention of the modern French novel Jann Matlock; 3. Reality and its representation in the nineteenth-century novel Alison Finch; 4. Women and fiction in the nineteenth century Margaret Cohen; 5. Popular fiction in the nineteenth century David Coward; 6. Decadence and the fin-de siecle novel Laurence M. Porter; 7. The Proustian revolution Christie McDonald; 8. Formal experiment and innovation David H. Walker; 9. Existentialism, engagement, ideology Steven Ungar; 10. War and the Holocaust Denis Boak; 11. From serious to popular fiction Stephen F. Noreiko; 12. The colonial and postcolonial Francophone novel Francoise Lionnet; 13. The French Canadian novel Denis Boak; 14. Gender and sexual identity in the modern French novel Jane Winston; 15. Postmodern French fiction: practice and theory Johnnie Gratton; General bibliography; Index.