The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel

Citation

MacKay, M. (2010). The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge Introductions to Literature.

Chapter Summary

The book has eleven chapters and, between them, ten "interchapters": longer readings of single novels, each three to five pages long. It also has an "About this book" section, notes, a glossary, a guide to further reading and an index, in about 230 pages. According to Cambridge University Press, the author draws on examples of famous novels from all over the world to explore where novels came from and why we read them, how we think about their styles and techniques, and their people, plots, places and politics. The interchapters run, in the publisher's words, "from Don Quixote to Midnight's Children."

Chapter 1: Why the Novel Matters

The opening chapter (pp. 1–15) takes up, as its title says, why the novel matters, and opens the book's account of the novel as the major literary genre of modern times. It is followed by an interchapter on Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605, 1615).

Chapter 2: Origins of the Novel

The chapter addresses the question the publisher puts first, where novels came from; the description calls the novel the "sensational entertainment of the eighteenth century." The interchapter that follows reads Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67).

Chapters 3–6: Narrating, Character, Plotting, Setting

These four chapters take up the craft elements the publisher lists: style and technique (narrating the novel), people (character), plots, and places (setting the novel). Chapter 3 is the longest in the book at about twenty pages. Each is paired with an interchapter, in order: James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) and Dickens's Bleak House (1853).

Chapters 7–8: Time and History; Genre and Subgenre

"Time and history" is followed by an interchapter on Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927). "Genre and subgenre" is followed by Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear (1943), a thriller, so the book's examples include genre fiction as well as canonical literary novels.

Chapters 9–10: Novel and Anti-Novel; Novel, Nation, Community

"Novel and anti-novel" is followed by Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). "Novel, nation, community" ends the sequence of main chapters; its title names nation and community, which matches the publisher's mention of politics, and the final interchapter reads Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981).

Chapter 11: Concluding

A short closing chapter of about eight pages. Its end matter comprises notes, a glossary of key terms (pp. 197–205) and a guide to further reading (pp. 206–210).

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Origins and Narration

• The novel as a modern form: the publisher presents the novel as an eighteenth-century entertainment that became the major literary genre of modern times.
• Narrating the novel: the topic of Chapter 3, which asks how readers think about a novel's style and technique.

Chapters 4–8: Elements and Contexts

• Character, plot and setting: the three structural elements given a chapter each (Chapters 4, 5 and 6).
• Time and history: the subject of Chapter 7, pairing the novel with historical time.
• Genre and subgenre: Chapter 8's way of organising novels into kinds.

Chapters 9–11: Challenges and Contexts

• Novel and anti-novel: as the title indicates, the relation between the novel and works set against its conventions; the paired interchapter is on Pynchon.
• Novel, nation, community: the chapter whose title ties the novel to national and communal life, paired with Rushdie.
• Glossary of key terms: nine pages of definitions at the back of the book.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A structure that teaches reading. Each topical chapter is followed by a longer reading of a single, named novel, so the abstract categories (narration, character, plot, setting, time, genre) are applied at once.
• Range of examples. The ten interchapters run from Don Quixote to Midnight's Children and include Gothic (Hogg), American (Hawthorne), French (Flaubert), Victorian (Dickens), modernist (Woolf), spy-thriller (Greene) and postmodern (Pynchon) novels, and the publisher stresses examples from all over the world.
• Compact and well equipped. In about 230 pages it supplies a glossary, notes and a guide to further reading, which the publisher describes as making it an ideal accompaniment to introductory courses on the novel.
• An orderly progression. The chapter titles move from why the novel matters and where it came from, through narration, character, plot and setting, to time and history, genre, anti-novel and nation, which runs from basic elements to wider contexts.

Limitations

• Short on each topic. Chapters run from about 8 to 21 pages, so each topic is introduced, not exhaustively argued.
• Interchapters mostly on English-language novels. Apart from Cervantes and Flaubert, the interchapter novels were written in English, so readers who want extended readings of novels from other literary traditions will need other books.
• No anthology material. The book contains no extracts for practice, so students need the novels themselves (or a collection) at hand.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the course on the novel, this book is the broad starting point: a short overview of the form. E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and David Lodge's The Art of Fiction are the closest companions; each takes the novel's elements one at a time, Forster as a set of lectures and Lodge as short essays illustrated with passages, so MacKay can be read first for a map and the other two for different voices on technique. Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel goes deeper into one of MacKay's themes, the novel's emergence in eighteenth-century England, while Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination and Lukács's The Theory of the Novel are theoretical works better approached after an overview of this kind.

How to Use This Book

The book suits students beginning a course on the novel and general readers who want a conceptual overview. The most useful preparation is to have read a few of the interchapter novels, such as Don Quixote (at least in extracts), The Scarlet Letter, Madame Bovary, Bleak House and To the Lighthouse.

A practical sequence is to read the first two chapters for orientation, then take Chapters 3 to 6 as the technical core, reading each interchapter after the novel it discusses. Chapters 7 to 10 work well as a second block on context. Use the glossary during reading to fix terms, and the further reading section to choose the next book. Because the interchapters are separate from the main chapters, a course can assign an interchapter alongside the novel it discusses.