Ideas And The Novel
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Yellowed. Markings: No markings.
What is the rightful place of ideas in fiction — and has the novel abandoned its intellectual duty? In Ideas and the Novel, Mary McCarthy mounts a spirited and erudite argument that the great novels of the nineteenth century were unafraid to embed grand philosophical, moral, and political ideas directly into their narratives, and that the modern novel has retreated into a narrower, more purely aesthetic space at its own peril. Drawing on a rich canon of examples — from Tolstoy and Stendhal to Dostoevsky and Henry James — McCarthy presents a case for the novel as a vehicle for serious thought, not merely sensation or character study. McCarthy's prose is characteristically sharp, witty, and combative, reflecting the intellectual fearlessness that made her one of America's most formidable critics and novelists. Delivered originally as the Northcliffe Lectures at University College London, this slim but potent volume argues that the divorce of ideas from storytelling impoverishes both. For anyone who has ever wondered whether fiction can — or should — wrestle with the great questions of human existence, Ideas and the Novel issues a challenge that is as bracingly relevant today as when it was first written.
Author: Mary Mccarthy
Format: Hardback
Published: 1980, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Yellowed. Markings: No markings.
What is the rightful place of ideas in fiction — and has the novel abandoned its intellectual duty? In Ideas and the Novel, Mary McCarthy mounts a spirited and erudite argument that the great novels of the nineteenth century were unafraid to embed grand philosophical, moral, and political ideas directly into their narratives, and that the modern novel has retreated into a narrower, more purely aesthetic space at its own peril. Drawing on a rich canon of examples — from Tolstoy and Stendhal to Dostoevsky and Henry James — McCarthy presents a case for the novel as a vehicle for serious thought, not merely sensation or character study. McCarthy's prose is characteristically sharp, witty, and combative, reflecting the intellectual fearlessness that made her one of America's most formidable critics and novelists. Delivered originally as the Northcliffe Lectures at University College London, this slim but potent volume argues that the divorce of ideas from storytelling impoverishes both. For anyone who has ever wondered whether fiction can — or should — wrestle with the great questions of human existence, Ideas and the Novel issues a challenge that is as bracingly relevant today as when it was first written.