The Global and the Multilinear: Novelistic Forms for Planetary Processes

Abstract:Numerous scholars have argued that narrative multilinearity defines the contemporary novel's engagement with planetary processes ranging from globalization to ecological and migrant crises. This article seeks to develop and clarify the notion of multilinearity, adopting a narratological framework that distinguishes between three dimensions of multilinear novels—what I call their linkage, distribution, and focus. I discuss examples for each of these dimensions, examining their interaction and also investigating, from a broadly New Formalist perspective, how they speak to larger tensions, inherent in globalization, between cosmopolitan aspirations and a history of inequalities. In the final section, I turn to Hanya Yanagihara's novel To Paradise as a powerful illustration of how multilinear form is able to probe the complexity and moral murkiness of global processes, particularly when novelistic narrative resists the temptation of a closed form and instead embraces the instability of the multilinear.