The epinovel: A study of modern British fiction in forms longer than the novel

This study provides a suggestive description of the epinovel, the unified multi-novel work of fiction, as an example of the continuing pattern of self-reflective literary experiment at work throughout the history of the novel. It establishes that epinovels are not simply a minor variation of the novel, showing how epinovels explore the novel's suspicion of its own conventions of narrative closure, focalization, and emplotment. It argues further that acceptance of the epinovel as a major form of narrative fiction permits a new perspective of the workings of both the novel and fictional narrative as a whole. Focusing on examples from the specific context of twentieth-century British fiction, the study further argues that attention to the epinovel suggests the need to revise existing conceptions of that period's literary history.;The study begins with a general discussion of the epinovel's history from the eighteenth century, and the theoretical implications of the difference between novel and epinovel. It then proceeds, in two central chapters, to lay out, as an axis for considering specific epinovels, a distinction between epinovels such as C. P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers and Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time that destabilize the conventions of the centralized novel (the Bildungsroman), and those like Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and John Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles that similarly destabilize the decentralized (or social) novel. Discussion of these works shows at once how each exemplifies the epinovel's general project by extending conventional narrative beyond the limits it usually sets for itself, and how each follows a somewhat different program for this destabilizing extension.;The concluding chapter then examines the epinovel in the context of modern British literary history (which has largely characterized it a minor and anti-Modernist form) showing the epinovel's significance as one experimental form in a period of great experiment and development. Finally the study asserts that continuing study of the epinovel, both as a form in itself and as a partner of the novel, will enhance our general understanding of narrative and narrative history.