Christoph Bode. The Novel: An Introduction

Although the novel continues to be challenged by new forms of narrative communication, and although critics have questioned the borderline between the novel as fiction and various forms of non-fictional discourse, there is little doubt that the novel is still one of the most important literary genres that we have. One of the reasons why is suggested by its extraordinary flexibility and elasticity: over and over again, the novel proves to be capable of changing and developing as a genre while at the same time retaining important generic characteristics introduced, developed and refined over the four hundred years that have passed since the publication of Cervantes’s Don Quijote (1605, 1615). In his Preface to The Novel: An Introduction, Christoph Bode notes that “this volume is intended as a general introduction to the critical analysis of novels” (vii). In actual fact it is more than that, since Bode not only gives a competent introduction to the study of the novel but also makes a range of helpful and critically stimulating observations on narrative theory and analysis. One notable asset of the book is that although these observations are relevant to various kinds of narrative, including short fiction, they are also illuminating with regards to the task of reading and studying novels. Thus there is a strong sense in which The Novel: An Introduction serves the dual purpose of introducing the reader to the rich tradition of the European novel on the one hand and giving the reader the critical concepts and tools required to study novels on the other. Chapter 1 begins by focusing on openings in the novel. This is a good choice, because the problem of beginnings looms large both in theories of the novel and in narrative theory, and because it is closely linked to challenges of writing as well as reading. Usefully reminding us that narratives (including novels) necessarily “only pretend to begin with the beginning” (p. 1), Bode points out that the challenge of how to begin is possessed of pragmatic aspects as well as ontological and epistemological ones – a beginning is contingent and yet “in narrative, everything depends on it” (p. 2). One critical advantage of beginning by discussing beginnings is that Bode can highlight problems of the novel that are also significant narrative issues. Thus he gives illustrative examples from the beginnings of novels such as Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) while at the same time referring to a classic study of the novel such as E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel (1927) and to an influential work of modern narrative theory such as Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse