01 / Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Citation
Lukács, G. (1974). The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (A. Bostock, Trans.). MIT Press.
Chapter Summary
The book is a short essay of about 160 pages, written in 1914–15 and first published in German in 1916. The English translation by Anna Bostock appeared in 1971, and the MIT Press paperback is dated 1974. The edition carries a preface that Lukács wrote in 1962, in which he looks back critically on the work. After the preface, the contents move from sections on the epic and the novel to later sections on types of novel.
Context and Argument
Lukács wrote the essay at the point where, as the publisher puts it, he was moving from Kant to Hegel, within a Central European tradition of dialectical idealism and a radical critique of bourgeois culture. It was his last major work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism. His thesis is that literary forms answer to historical conditions. The Greek world was a closed totality in which meaning was given, and the epic expressed it. Modern society is alienated, and meaning can be found only in the inner life of the individual. The novel is the form of this situation, and Lukács names its condition "transcendental homelessness".
Preface (1962)
Written more than four decades after the essay, the preface describes the work as mistaken in important respects while seeing in it a "romantic anti-capitalism" that later developed into Marxism. It is also the source of his dismissal of Adorno and others as living in the "Grand Hotel Abyss".
Integrated Civilisations
The first section describes cultures in which meaning is immanent in life and the individual is at home in the world. Greek epic poetry represents that totality, and the section sets the standard against which the novel is measured.
The Problems of a Philosophy of the History of Forms
The section sets out the method of the essay: forms of art are to be understood as products of history and of the changing relation between the individual and the world.
The Epic and the Novel
Lukács contrasts the two forms. The epic gives shape to a complete world; the novel arises when the world has become heterogeneous and the individual is a problematic seeker.
The Inner Form of the Novel
The section considers the formal consequences of that situation for the novel, including the part played by irony.
The typology of novel forms
The later sections propose types of novel according to the relation between the hero and the world. One type is the novel of abstract idealism, in which an individual's illusion fails against reality, as with Don Quixote; another is the novel of disillusionment, in which the hero discovers the impossibility of finding meaning in the world. Goethe and Tolstoy are among the authors discussed in these later sections.
Key Concepts
Throughout the essay
- Integrated and problematic civilisations: cultures in which meaning is given, as against cultures in which it must be sought.
- Transcendental homelessness: the condition of an individual no longer at home in a world that seems devoid of meaning.
- Epic and novel as historical forms: the epic is the form of a closed totality, and the novel the form of a world left open.
- Abstract idealism and disillusionment: two types in the typology of the novel.
- Irony and the inner form of the novel: the formal means by which the novel handles the gap between self and world.
Critical Analysis
Strengths
- Brevity and focus. At about 160 pages, the essay presents a complete theory of the novel in a short space.
- Historical depth. It links the form of the novel to a philosophy of history, from Greek epic to modern disenchantment, so that genre becomes a historical question.
- Influence. It is widely regarded as a seminal work of literary theory and of the theory of genre, and the idea of the gap between self and society recurs in later work, including Bakhtin's contrast of epic and novel.
- Author's own commentary. The 1962 preface lets readers see how Lukács judged the book after he became a Marxist critic.
Limitations
- Difficult and compressed prose. The essay is dense and philosophical, and its terms are rarely defined from scratch.
- Philosophical prerequisites. The argument assumes some knowledge of Kant, Hegel and German idealism.
- A limited set of novels. The examples are chiefly European novels, from Don Quixote to Tolstoy, so the theory is not tested against other traditions.
- The author's later rejection. Lukács himself described the work as erroneous in important ways, so it should be read as a document of its moment and not as a final statement.
Where It Fits in the Course
Among the books of the novel course, this essay is one of two advanced theoretical texts. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, Lodge's The Art of Fiction and MacKay's The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel are gentler introductions to what novels are made of. Watt's The Rise of the Novel explains the form's emergence in eighteenth-century England through readers, economics and religion, whereas Lukács works at a much higher level of generality.
Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination is the natural companion. It also sets the novel against the epic, but it reads the contrast through language and social voices, where Lukács reads it through the philosophy of history. Reading the two together shows two different accounts of the same transition.
How to Use This Book
The book suits graduate students and advanced undergraduates in comparative literature, literary theory and German studies. Before beginning, read several major European novels, and gain a basic acquaintance with Hegel's ideas, for example through a short introduction.
Read the essay slowly and in order, summarising each section in a few sentences. Postpone the 1962 preface until you have worked through the main text, so that the author's later objections do not frame your first reading. Test the typology against novels you know, such as Don Quixote, and then compare the argument with Bakhtin's essay "Epic and Novel". A second reading, with the preface first, shows how a thinker revises early work.