Abstract
dc:descriptionThis study traces the changes in Howells' narrative techniques as he confronted the paradox that novels create their own narrative logic and unity independent of (and often contrary to) the vision of reality depicted in the work. Howells' novels are characterized by competing or contradictory logics, one a creative embodiment of innovative nineteenth-century realist narrative techniques and the other, a reactive response to the artificiality of all narrative conventions, realist or otherwise. In this formalist re-evaluation of all thirty-six of Howells' novels written over his fifty-year career, the novels are approached as expressions of a working novelist and critic attempting to define and re-define realist narrative principles. Howells' reactions to this paradox takes several forms as he attempted to locate his aesthetic project formally, socially, and commercially within the period's changing literary marketplace.
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Ph.D.
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Dissertation
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- English
- Grantor
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Year dc:date
- 2014
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Morgan, Mary Alice
- Contributors dc:contributor
-
- Baym, Nina
Subjects
dc:subject × 2Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Identifier
- (UMI)AAI9305625
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/72037