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According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. Empty Houses challenges this consensus by reexamining the genre's development from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and exploring what has until now seemed an anomaly--the frustrated theatrical ambitions of major novelists. Offering new interpretations of the careers of William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin--writers known for mapping ever-narrower interior geographies--this book argues that the genre's inward-looking tendency has been misunderstood. Delving into the critical role of the theater in the origins of the novel of interiority, David Kurnick reinterprets the novel as a record of dissatisfaction with inwardness and an injunction to rethink human identity in radically collective and social terms. Exploring neglected texts in order to reread canonical ones, Kurnick shows that the theatrical ambitions of major novelists had crucial formal and ideological effects on their masterworks. Investigating a key stretch of each of these novelistic careers, he establishes the theatrical genealogy of some of the signal techniques of narrative interiority. In the process he illustrates how the novel is marked by a hunger for palpable collectivity, and argues that the genre's discontents have been a shaping force in its evolution. A groundbreaking rereading of the novel, Empty Houses provides new ways to consider the novelistic imagination.

Drama --- Fiction --- American fiction --- English fiction --- Drama, Modern --- Dramas --- Dramatic works --- Plays --- Playscripts --- Stage --- Literature --- Dialogue --- Metafiction --- Novellas (Short novels) --- Novels --- Stories --- Novelists --- Technique --- History. --- History and criticism. --- Philosophy --- Daniel Deronda. --- Exiles. --- Felix Hold. --- George Eliot. --- Henry James. --- James Baldwin. --- James Joyce. --- Lovel the Widower. --- Middlemarch. --- Romola. --- The Awkward Age. --- The Other House. --- The Spanish Gypsy. --- The Wolves in the Lamb. --- Ulysses. --- Vanity Fair. --- William Makepeace Thackeray. --- antitheatricality. --- collective desire. --- collective spaces. --- collectivity. --- drama. --- dramanovels. --- dramatic form. --- epiphany. --- interior monologue. --- interiority. --- literary criticism. --- narrative voice. --- novel. --- novelists. --- plays. --- public space. --- theater.

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Animal Narratology interrogates what it means to narrate, to speak—speak for, on behalf of—and to voice, or represent life beyond the human, which is in itself as different as insects, bears, and dogs are from each other, and yet more, as individual as a single mouse, horse, or puma. The varied contributions to this interdisciplinary Special Issue highlight assumptions about the human perception of, attitude toward, and responsibility for the animals that are read and written about, thus demonstrating that just as “the animal” does not exist, neither does “the human”. In their zoopoetic focus, the analyses are aware that animal narratology ultimately always contains an approximation of an animal perspective in human terms and terminology, yet they make clear that what matters is how the animal is approximated and that there is an effort to approach and encounter the non-human in the first place. Many of the analyses come to the conclusion that literary animals give readers the opportunity to expand their own points of view both on themselves and others by adopting another’s perspective to the degree that such an endeavor is possible. Ultimately, the contributions call for a recognition of the many spaces, moments, and modes in which human lives are entangled with those of animals—one of which is located within the creative bounds of storytelling.

Research & information: general --- Biology, life sciences --- Animals & society --- animal narrators --- anthropocentrism --- cultural ontologies --- discourse analysis --- fiction-nonfiction distinction --- framing and footing --- life writing --- narratology --- politeness --- self-narratives --- animal studies --- human-animal studies --- speaking animals --- Tolstoy --- Bulgakov --- trauma theory --- Russian literature --- allegory --- humanism --- literary theory --- film studies --- George Orwell --- Animal Farm --- Chicken Run --- Uwe Timm --- 'Morenga' --- African history --- colonialism --- postcolonial German literature --- animal narratology --- multi-perspective narration --- animal agency --- The Plague Dogs --- Richard Adams --- unreliability --- talking animal stories --- non-human focalizer --- Pincher Martin --- non-human narrators --- intradiegetic narration --- Gerard Genette --- anthropomorphism --- Eric Linklater --- The Wind on the Moon --- direct speech --- characterization --- posthumanism --- inter-species comprehension --- Hindi cinema --- Bollywood --- animal narrator --- world literature --- empathy --- Cartesian dualism --- Maurice Merleau-Ponty --- animal poetry --- 'Inventing a Horse --- 'Spermaceti' --- eco-humanities --- eco-criticism --- eco-philosophy --- Industrial Farm Animal Production --- narrative --- plot --- conflict --- environmental crisis --- catastrophe --- play theory --- Franz Kafka --- manuscripts --- speaking-for --- narrative representation --- literary representation --- animal autobiography --- fictional autobiography --- meta-autobiography --- contextualist narratology --- cultural and literary animal studies --- poetics of knowledge --- zoology --- natural history --- equine autozoography --- horse-science --- narrative voice --- inoperativity --- singing mice --- zoopoetics --- anthropological machine --- community --- music --- Cervantes --- Novelas ejemplares --- El coloquio de los perros --- Novela del casamiento engañoso --- Siglo de Oro --- Early Modern Age --- cynicism --- Diogenes of Sinope --- Montaigne --- Derrida --- Animal Studies --- rhetoric --- animal narration --- fable --- Aesopic fables --- Greek fable --- antagonistic fables --- comics --- animals --- cinema --- sound effects --- science fiction --- Achilles --- Archilochus --- fox --- Gryllus --- Hesiod --- Homer --- Lucian --- pig --- Plutarch --- Pythagoras --- rooster --- Xanthus --- talking dogs --- agency --- animal --- dystopia --- Marie Darrieussecq --- human --- non-human --- Truismes --- Kafka studies --- adaptation studies --- intertextuality --- intermediality --- mimesis --- emulation --- imitation --- repetition --- parody --- autobiography --- genre --- entanglement --- Cixous --- dogs --- earth --- worldviews --- indigenous wisdom traditions --- relationality --- ecology --- language --- more-than-human geography --- multispecies ethnography --- ecopsychology --- anthropology --- environmental philosophy --- decolonization --- intuition --- instinct --- myth --- non-verbal communication --- IK --- TEK --- animality --- film --- White God --- filmic representation of animals --- material ecocriticism --- Moby-Dick --- Werner Herzog --- Hans Sahl --- lyric poetry --- mole --- space --- time --- species --- metamorphosis --- transformation --- exile --- animal narrators --- anthropocentrism --- cultural ontologies --- discourse analysis --- fiction-nonfiction distinction --- framing and footing --- life writing --- narratology --- politeness --- self-narratives --- animal studies --- human-animal studies --- speaking animals --- Tolstoy --- Bulgakov --- trauma theory --- Russian literature --- allegory --- humanism --- literary theory --- film studies --- George Orwell --- Animal Farm --- Chicken Run --- Uwe Timm --- 'Morenga' --- African history --- colonialism --- postcolonial German literature --- animal narratology --- multi-perspective narration --- animal agency --- The Plague Dogs --- Richard Adams --- unreliability --- talking animal stories --- non-human focalizer --- Pincher Martin --- non-human narrators --- intradiegetic narration --- Gerard Genette --- anthropomorphism --- Eric Linklater --- The Wind on the Moon --- direct speech --- characterization --- posthumanism --- inter-species comprehension --- Hindi cinema --- Bollywood --- animal narrator --- world literature --- empathy --- Cartesian dualism --- Maurice Merleau-Ponty --- animal poetry --- 'Inventing a Horse --- 'Spermaceti' --- eco-humanities --- eco-criticism --- eco-philosophy --- Industrial Farm Animal Production --- narrative --- plot --- conflict --- environmental crisis --- catastrophe --- play theory --- Franz Kafka --- manuscripts --- speaking-for --- narrative representation --- literary representation --- animal autobiography --- fictional autobiography --- meta-autobiography --- contextualist narratology --- cultural and literary animal studies --- poetics of knowledge --- zoology --- natural history --- equine autozoography --- horse-science --- narrative voice --- inoperativity --- singing mice --- zoopoetics --- anthropological machine --- community --- music --- Cervantes --- Novelas ejemplares --- El coloquio de los perros --- Novela del casamiento engañoso --- Siglo de Oro --- Early Modern Age --- cynicism --- Diogenes of Sinope --- Montaigne --- Derrida --- Animal Studies --- rhetoric --- animal narration --- fable --- Aesopic fables --- Greek fable --- antagonistic fables --- comics --- animals --- cinema --- sound effects --- science fiction --- Achilles --- Archilochus --- fox --- Gryllus --- Hesiod --- Homer --- Lucian --- pig --- Plutarch --- Pythagoras --- rooster --- Xanthus --- talking dogs --- agency --- animal --- dystopia --- Marie Darrieussecq --- human --- non-human --- Truismes --- Kafka studies --- adaptation studies --- intertextuality --- intermediality --- mimesis --- emulation --- imitation --- repetition --- parody --- autobiography --- genre --- entanglement --- Cixous --- dogs --- earth --- worldviews --- indigenous wisdom traditions --- relationality --- ecology --- language --- more-than-human geography --- multispecies ethnography --- ecopsychology --- anthropology --- environmental philosophy --- decolonization --- intuition --- instinct --- myth --- non-verbal communication --- IK --- TEK --- animality --- film --- White God --- filmic representation of animals --- material ecocriticism --- Moby-Dick --- Werner Herzog --- Hans Sahl --- lyric poetry --- mole --- space --- time --- species --- metamorphosis --- transformation --- exile