Modern Novel: A Short Introduction

This book introduces readers to the history of the novel in the twentieth century and demonstrates its ongoing relevance as a literary form.



A jargon-free introduction to the whole history of the novel in the twentieth century.

Examines the main strands of twentieth-century fiction, including post-war, post-imperial and multicultural fiction, the global novel, the digital novel and the post-realist novel.

Offers students ideas about how to read the modern novel, how to enjoy its strange experiments, and how to assess its value, as well as suggesting ways to understand and appreciate the more difficult forms of modern fiction

Pays attention both to the practice of novel writing and to theoretical debates among novelists.

Claims that the novel is as purposeful and relevant today as it was a hundred years ago.

Serves as an excellent springboard for classroom discussions of the nature and purpose of modern fiction.

Jesse Matz is Assistant Professor at Kenyon College. He is the author of Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics (2001) and winner of Harvard University's Roslyn Abramson prize for excellence in teaching.

"What makes the 20th century novel modern? What relations to modernity make fiction experimental and new? Is the postmodern novel a fiction of exhaustion or the replenishment of modernism's purpose? In this detailed and readable book, Jesse Matz offers useful answers to these questions and a guide to novels from Henry james to Zadie Smith." Elaine Showalter



"Jesse Matz’s The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction is an ambitious and impressive study of twentieth-century, English-language novels from both sides of the Atlantic and beyond ... This appealingly written, jargon-free overview of the modern novel will certainly change the way I think about – and teach – the field." Brian W. Shaffer, Rhodes College

Acknowledgments.
Introduction: Modern How?.
1 When and Why: The Rise of the Modern Novel.
2 “What is Reality?”: The New Questions.
3 New Forms: Reshaping the Novel.
4 New Difficulties.
5 Regarding the Real World: Politics.
6 Questioning the Modern: Mid-Century Revisions.
7 Postmodern Replenishments.
8 Postcolonial Modernity.
Conclusions.
Notes.
Index