The old definition of the novel as a long realistic prose narrative with character, action and plot no longer holds true for our times. Broader concepts like ‘fiction’, ‘narrative’ and ‘text’ have gained currency, instead.
Understanding the Novel: A Theoretical Overview reiterates that the novel remains a relevant and pertinent concept and that any reckoning with the form has to integrally involve its character as a flexible and incorporative genre. This book revisits and collates theoretical debates over the generic fundamentals of the novel-the rise of the novel, its changing relation to realism, its ups and downs within the literary canon, its constant rejuvenation as a ‘novel’ or new form and successive pronouncements of it’s ‘death’, as well as the broad contours of generic incorporations in the course of its development. This book also examines some aspects of the novel in India-the early preference for melodrama and sensation over realism, the novel’s late popularity in south India, the dominance of the short story over the novel in Urdu, and the unease with the globalized Indian-English novel. This study provides an interesting and accessible theoretical overview of debates by historically contextualizing both the novel and its theory in middle-class histories.