Abstract

This book explains the novel as a genre in terms of spoken language, oral story, and writing. It begins by laying out certain grounding concepts. The cognitive sciences have established that language and story are constitutive elements of the human animal. Both language and story are built into our cognitive make-up and have specifiable qualities. It is also the case that if we think historically and anthropologically, then we can establish that oral story in oral culture is the default kind of human storytelling. It, too, has specifiable qualities. Then, if we consider the qualities of oral story in relation to our cognitive capacities, we can establish certain foundational elements of human story in general. In other words we can make a reasonable case for the nature of story as such, and then we can use this basis as a means for thinking about kinds of story that vary from the oral story paradigm. Given the well-established effects of the technology of writing in human life, it seems almost natural to consider written story in relation to the oral story paradigm. But because print is always taken as primary, there has been only passing consideration of the most prominent kind of written story—the novel—in relation to writing. As I show in great detail, it is alphabetography, not print, that determines what is most distinctive about novelistic story. In fact the novel is the conformation of story to alphabetography, and as a genre it is essentially conflicted by just this fact. After presenting these ideas in my introduction, I go on to examine and extend them in close-readings of a series of great novels: Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Bleak House, Passage to India, The Waves, The Golden Notebook, and Atonement.