Check out this new book by Department of French faculty member Nicholas Paige, available in print and as an ebook through the online catalog.
From introduction:
“This book is about the evolution of French and to a lesser degree English novels – by which I mean French- and English-language novels – from 1601 to 1830. And while evolution is very much at the center of my preoccupations, I do not offer a “story” about that evolution. There is no plot, as we might want if we thought of the novel moving forward, perhaps from birth, episode by episode, toward a resolution, some happy state of stability – as if, in other words, the novel’s own history could be made into a kind of novel.”
“In lieu of a story, Technologies of the Novel offers a quantitative account of the ceaseless yet patterned flux of the novel system over these twenty-three decades.”
“Technologies of the Novel is, then, digital and distant; but it is most certainly not antianalogue or anticlose.”