Abstract

The first, easiest answer to the question "What do novels speak about?" is D. H. Lawrence's conviction that novels are about "man alive," as quoted at the beginning of Guido Mazzoni's recent book on the theory of the novel.1 In a slightly more explicit accounting, one could say that novels speak about human actions and passions. These answers are the first, because they are plausible and general. They are the easiest, because they state the obvious. And yet, precisely because they are so obvious, such answers often tend to be overlooked in our search for better, more complete explanations.One can improve these answers by noting that, culturally and historically, the novel has been divided into older, therefore...