Margaret Cohen

The Literary Channel: The Inter-National Invention of the Novel - Translation / Transnation Margaret Cohen

Commendation Quotes: This book powerfully argues that one can understand the long-term national traditions of the novel only by also understanding the long-term transnationality of the form. As a comparatist work, it intervenes to resituate the novel in the literary history of France and of England, and by doing this it also revises the overall history of the modern western novel. Building from some of the most challenging and valuable recent contributions to thinking about the novel as a modern form, it is at the cutting edge. Commendation Quotes: This collection makes important new arguments about the rise and development of the novel in England and France; it adds significantly to our understanding of the relation between national literatures and nation-building in the modern era. Together the essays amply demonstrate the importance of cross-national analysis for literary studies. The book is sure to have a major impact on scholarly discussions of the novel in Europe and America. Marc Notes: Bibl. ref. & index; Cloth avail. @ $59.50. Table of Contents: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi Introduction by Margaret Cohen and Carolyn Dever 1 PART I: The Novel without Borders 35 CHAPTER ONE: Transnationalism and the Origins of the (French) Novel by Joan DeJean 37 CHAPTER TWO: National or Transnational? The Eighteenth-Century Novel 50 CHAPTER THREE: Sentimental Bonds and Revolutionary Characters: Richardson's "Pamela" in England and France by Lynn Festa 73 CHAPTER FOUR: Sentimental Communities by Margaret Cohen 106 CHAPTER FIVE: Transnational Sympathies, Imaginary Communities by April Slliston 133 PART II: Imaging the "Othered" Nation 149 CHAPTER SIX: Phantom States: "Cleveland, The Recess" and the Origins of Historical Fiction by Richard Maxwell 151 CHAPTER SEVEN: Gender, Empire, and Episolarity: FromJane Austen's "Mansfeild Park" to Marie-Therese Humbert's "La montogue des Signaux" by Francoise Lionnet 183 CHAPTER EIGHT: The (Dis)locations of Romantic Nationalism: Shelley, Stael, and the Home-Schooling of Monsters by Deidre Shauna Lunch 194 CHAPTER NINE: "An Occult and Immoral Tyranny": The Novel, the Police, and the Agent Provocateur by Carolyn Dever 225 CHAPTER TEN: Comparative Sapphism by Sharon marcus 251 AFTERWORD: From Literary Channel to Narrative Chunnel by Emily Apter 286 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 295 CONTRIBUTORS 303 INDEX 305Publisher Marketing:"The Literary Channel" defines a crucial transnational literary "zone" that shaped the development of the modern novel. During the first two centuries of the genre's history, Britain and France were locked in political, economic, and military struggle. The period also saw British and French writers, critics, and readers enthusiastically exchanging works, codes, and theories of the novel. Building on both nationally based literary history and comparatist work on poetics, this book rethinks the genre's evolution as marking the power and limits of modern cultural nationalism. In the Channel zone, the novel developed through interactions among texts, readers, writers, and translators that inextricably linked national literary cultures. It served as a forum to promote and critique nationalist cliches, whether from the standpoint of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, the insurgent nationalism of colonized spaces, or the non-nationalized culture of consumption. In the process, the Channel zone promoted codes that became the genre's hallmarks, including the sentimental poetics that would shape fiction through the nineteenth century. Uniting leading critics who bridge literary history and theory, "The Literary Channel" will appeal to all readers attentive to the future of literary studies, as well as those interested in the novel's development, British and French cultural history, and extra-national patterns of cultural exchange. Contributors include April Alliston, Emily Apter, Margaret Cohen, Joan DeJean, Carolyn Dever, Lynn Festa, Francoise Lionnet, Deidre Shauna Lynch, Sharon Marcus, Richard Maxwell, and Mary Helen McMurran."

Contributor Bio:  Cohen, Margaret Margaret Cohen is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. Contributor Bio:  Dever, Carolyn Carolyn Dever is Professor of English and Dean of the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee.