NDLI: On the Unity of the Novel

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Hajdu, Péter
Copyright Year	2001
Abstract	Unity is so usual a requirement in criticism of the novel that it rarely seems to need any justification or foundation. On the other hand, the ideal interpretation seems to be an interpretation that is able to account for every part of a piece of literature in its relation to every other part and to the whole, i.e., one which can demonstrate the perfect unity of the work. Theoreticians usually admit that due to the resistance of the literary text such ideal interpretation is practically impossible. The first theoretical explanation of the requirement for unity appeared in Aristotle's Poetics, where it discussed the unity of the plot. In nineteenth-century criticism of the novel the Aristotelian heritage had two derivatives, the dramatic unity of the plot and a thematic unity of a philosophical teaching. Unity may be considered as the western reader's projection rather than an intrinsic value of the text. The reader, who has learned his reading strategies from a critical system based on Aristotle's approach to the drama, wants to receive a complete and coherent worldview, and thus he reads a literary text with the presupposition that it constitutes a unitary whole. Wolfgang Iser's theory of reading may also support this hypothesis. In his concept, however, perfect understanding, or the understanding of a work as a unity, is impossible because what makes the reading of a piece of fiction an aesthetic experience is that it is theoretically impossible to form a total consistency. On the basis of the insight that readers can develop only partial consistency, different critiques offer various ways of approaching the problem: (1) totalizing the partial consistency by eliminating or disregarding all the inconvenient elements; (2) abandoning our quest for unity and enjoying our mental strength in facing nothingness; (3) realising the possibility that texts do contain several incompatible unifying patterns. Although I think the time has come to say goodbye to the requirement of unity, at the end of the paper I will raise the question of whether a dialogic approach to literature is able to manage a model based on the co-existence of several incompatible entities within a non-unitary text?
Starting Page	101
Ending Page	115
Page Count	15
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03244652
Journal	Neohelicon
Volume Number	28
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	15882810
Language	English
Publisher	Kluwer Academic Publishers
Publisher Date	2001-01-01
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Comparative Literature
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Arts and Humanities Law

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

Religion and the novel

On the necessity of comparative literature

On the Comparative Study of the Region's Literatures

God, ethics, and the novel: Dostoevsky and Vasily Grossman

Reflections on the Paratext

Aspects of comparative literature

The rape of literature

On Enzensberger

Comparative Literature, the Transnational, and the Global

On the Unity of the Novel

Similar Documents

Religion and the novel

On the necessity of comparative literature

On the Comparative Study of the Region's Literatures

God, ethics, and the novel: Dostoevsky and Vasily Grossman

Reflections on the Paratext

Aspects of comparative literature

The rape of literature

On Enzensberger

Comparative Literature, the Transnational, and the Global

On the Unity of the Novel