Introduction: Novel Forms

Abstract

The introduction briefly lays out the stakes of the chapters in the section “Novel Forms” and offers an editorial appraisal of their relevance for the idea of the novel as network. It suggests that while “form” has been one of if not the central issue in literary studies, within the context of a larger network of the novel, it takes on a slightly different shape. More fully integrated not just into the question of social totality, but also into publishing processes, for example, form becomes differently readable in the contemporary than before. Issues such as the novel’s “newness” become both a matter of formal innovation—as in the adoption of new modes of writing or new genres—as they become issues of marketing, where the “new” is, if in a different register perhaps, in fact a marker of less radical breaks with the past.