Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks

Typically, readers believe that fiction, especially the Realist novels that dominated Western culture for most of the nineteenth century and beyond, is based on historical truth and that great novels possess a documentary value. That trust, Gay brilliantly shows, is misplaced; novels take their own path to reality. Using Dickens, Flaubert, and Mann as his examples, Gay explores their world, their craftsmanship, and their minds. In the process, he discovers that all three share one overriding quality: a resentment and rage against the society that sustains the novel itself. Using their stylish writing as a form of revenge, they deal out savage reprisals, which have become part of our Western literary canon. A New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of 2002.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 12/17/2003
ISBN: 9780393325096
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.39lbs
Size: 8.42h x 5.74w x 0.47d