The Novel Of Adultery
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:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few transgressions have proven as irresistible to the literary imagination as adultery, and Judith Armstrong's The Novel of Adultery presents a rigorous and captivating critical study of this enduring theme across the canon of European fiction. Armstrong systematically examines how novelists from Flaubert to Tolstoy, and beyond, have wielded the adulterous affair as a prism through which to illuminate the tensions between individual desire and social convention, mapping the moral and psychological landscapes of their respective ages. With scholarly precision and genuine literary sensitivity, she argues that the adultery novel is not merely a vehicle for scandal or melodrama, but a sophisticated genre that encodes society's deepest anxieties about marriage, gender, freedom, and transgression. Armstrong's analytical style is both authoritative and accessible, drawing on a wide range of primary texts to construct a compelling comparative framework that cuts across national literary traditions. Her work situates iconic heroines — from Emma Bovary to Anna Karenina — within a broader cultural and ideological context, revealing how their fates are shaped as much by the societies that condemn them as by their own choices. A landmark work of literary criticism, The Novel of Adultery leaves the reader with an unsettling question: has the novel ever truly been about anything else?
Author: Judith Armstrong
Format: Hardback
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few transgressions have proven as irresistible to the literary imagination as adultery, and Judith Armstrong's The Novel of Adultery presents a rigorous and captivating critical study of this enduring theme across the canon of European fiction. Armstrong systematically examines how novelists from Flaubert to Tolstoy, and beyond, have wielded the adulterous affair as a prism through which to illuminate the tensions between individual desire and social convention, mapping the moral and psychological landscapes of their respective ages. With scholarly precision and genuine literary sensitivity, she argues that the adultery novel is not merely a vehicle for scandal or melodrama, but a sophisticated genre that encodes society's deepest anxieties about marriage, gender, freedom, and transgression. Armstrong's analytical style is both authoritative and accessible, drawing on a wide range of primary texts to construct a compelling comparative framework that cuts across national literary traditions. Her work situates iconic heroines — from Emma Bovary to Anna Karenina — within a broader cultural and ideological context, revealing how their fates are shaped as much by the societies that condemn them as by their own choices. A landmark work of literary criticism, The Novel of Adultery leaves the reader with an unsettling question: has the novel ever truly been about anything else?