Technical Innovations in the Novel

I call upon your greater knowledge to point me in the direction of insightful works that, perhaps historically, treat innovations in the novelistic form. Are you aware of any such texts?

You may be thinking of recent innovations, or Western innovations, but it's not where I'm focused at the moment, so I'm going to give you some thoughts from the little cubbyhole I'm currently exploring.

I am in the middle of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, an anthology that has a number of very good articles in it about the development of full-length Chinese prose works. I see in the table of contents some discussion of modern novels in China as well, though I haven't gotten there yet and can't speak to them. Introductory and historical more than theoretical. I have Writing in Dante's Cult of Truth: From Borges to Boccaccio on deck - while I don't yet know what she'll say, I think of Boccaccio as one of the great innovators who links the 1001 Nights style frame stories to the emergence of the Western novel, and absolutely adore Menocal. I remember some interesting stuff about the emergence of the Japanese novel in Helen McCullough's Genji and Heike introduction (the book itself is mostly partial translations of the two works). I think Pound's ABCs of Reading is more often noted for his commentary on poetry, but he talks novels, too, and I planned to pull that one out when we did the Cantos later this year.

Some of the most brilliant discussions of fiction and its role in general that I can think of are in The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. He does a masterful job of blurring genre distinctions, and those chapters (I believe there are three of them paced in the middle of the book) can be read as essay perhaps more easily than fiction themselves.

The True Story of the Novel by Margaret Doody. You might try looking at some books on narratology as some of those deal with the novel. The Historical Novel by Georg Lucas is interesting. For some reason, I think Terry Eagleton has a book on the novel. He is always fun to read. Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher, has done some work with the novel - but I don't think in one collected piece. Let me check.

MATTERS OF FACT AND FICTION by Gore Vidal is good.

The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600 was enjoyable, could have been a more incisive though, less love letter.

OK some of these seem to be specifically about technical innovations but others not. I am going to look into it but the last thing I need is to add MORE stuff to my reading list -

Technically innovative how? From the publishing and dispersal? From a "realism" point of view?

I don't know what is meant by innovation here, but as a novelist, i find innovation often is simply a matter of ignoring the formal. for instance, in one novel I found that two chapters split a sentence; in another I found that both chapter 3 qnd 4 fit together, so they are listed as chapters 3&4 and proceed to 5; in another, the narrators, in a novel that is a satire involving assasinations, keep getting killed, so the novel careens from first person to third to second etc. Are these innovations? I think the word is too grandiose. In fact, I think the form of the novel, the form at its most true, is inclusive of all that would be innovation if free minds were reading.
As far as realism goes, my first published novel was called meta-fictional, so i learned that word, but a writer who understands me well would call it something like very real, or more realist than realism...
I recall Garcia of the Gabriel Marquez explaining the normalcy of 'magical realism' with an anecdote about his toaster...

Well I was under the impression that there is such a thing as 'technical innovation' and discussed as such because, well, I read such things as "Flaubert, as the source of many of the most important technical innovations made since the middle of the nineteenth century, remains the fountainhead..." (Harouet) or "Woolf's decision to de-emphasize women's issues in this novel coincided with the discovery of technical innovations..." (Transue). So I was wondering if there was a text that had as its subject the topic of technical innovations in the novel's form... seemed not too far fetched.

I may have not worded the request well, but there it is.

Yes, there is such a book - I haven't read it. Franco Moretti's The Novel: Volume 1 and The Novel: Volume Two. These are merely selections from the five-volume Il Romanzo - for those who read Italian. Volume 2 subtitled "Forms and Themes" is probably the book you seek.

Ur, thank you - it did sound as though you understood my initial query. As luck has it, we have both volumes of Moretti. I am off to pick it up this morning. My best to you and your goats.

A_Musing.. Por's link to the Melville article piqued my interest in The Confidence Man .. and I procured a copy. I hope to read it soon.

Pk, I understood your meaning too, but others were quicker off the ball. Also, I have no suggestions except to say it might be worth looking at some college level text books on the history of the novel to get this kind of information.

The Moretti looks brilliant.

The Moretti does look brilliant. My Amazon fingers have been itching ever since I mentioned it yesterday. What say ye? Should I give into crass consumerism and let my fingers do the walking?

I picked up both tomes (and tomes they are).

Volume II TOC

Vol. II Preface

Oh dear, oh dear, PK you are the tempter himself. I fear my actions. But you know ... this one might make a good tome read for 2013.

I have been known to play that role.

I don't think anyone on this thread has clarified what technical innovation in the novel is.

Rick,

That's why we're going to read this book. You will also be assigned to read the long version of the OED.

Regarding Flaubert and Madame Bovary, the chapter involving the agricultural fair would probably be considered an innovation...and the work in general.

Ammon Shea supposedly read the entire OED and wrote a book about the process. I bet Rick's book would be much more interesting.

Ur, your cruelty will be noted amongst the LT elite.

Right as Ur said... the point of my question in the first place (and the suggestion of Moretti's work satisfies me). Believe me the last thing I was setting out to do was pinpoint a necessary and sufficient definition of "technical innovation".