The Encyclopedia of the Novel

The proposed volume is an advanced desktop reference source on the novel as a literary genre. International in scope, its articles will focus on the history, terminology, and concepts essential to studying the genre, in entries of 1,000-5,000 words. While available to the beginner, the Encyclopedia is aimed at a wider, more experienced audience. Its goal is to assist specialists, graduate students, and teachers when working in fields ancillary to their areas of expertise, and interested general readers looking for detailed information.

There has long been a need for a volume combining the historical and critical concepts relevant to novel study in a single source. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has served this purpose admirably for poetry since it first appeared in 1965; now in its second edition, it remains an unparalleled resource for poetry scholars, whether seeking information on tonality in Chinese verse or the structure of sapphonic meter. No comparable, readily affordable reference book on the novel and novel theory exists, and novel scholars currently have to rely on an unwieldy variety of reference materials. For common theoretical concepts, we have anthologies of primary texts: Essentials of the Theory of Fiction (Duke, 1988), and Dorothy Hale's recent The Novel (Blackwell, 2006). Histories of the novel in different parts of the world can be found in companions to national and language-specific literatures, such as the New Oxford Companion to Literature in French (1995) and the Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900-2003 (Routledge, 2004). General literary terms, like metaphor, receive excellent treatment in the Encyclopedia of Poetry, but this is useless for novel terminology. When all else fails, there are the better literature handbooks, but their abbreviated discussions are geared to undergraduates, and terms specific to the novel are frequently omitted. A Handbook to Literature (Prentice Hall, 1996) includes one sentence on heteroglossia and nothing on indirect discourse. The Bedford Glossary of Critical Terms (1998) gives 100 words to indirect discourse but leaves out heteroglossia.

This situation improved in 1999 with the publication of Schellinger's Encyclopedia of the Novel, 2 vol. (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), though at $300/£220 list, it is not comparable to the Encyclopedia of Poetry, which lists at $45/£29.95. In concept, the two works have little in common. At 1400 pages, the Encyclopedia of Poetry affords generous coverage to poetic history and theory by omitting entries on individual poets and poems. The Encyclopedia of the Novel, 1600 pages, is primarily a collection of articles on individual novels and novelists, which account for 70% of its 622 entries. As a result, its coverage of other topics is limited. It includes only 12 entries on novel theory and criticism combined, for example, and 30 entries on the formal or technical issues.

The proposed Encyclopedia will consist of several hundred articles, written by different specialists, which focus entirely on the history, terminology, and theory of the novel as a genre. Articles will mention individual authors and novels, of course, as they pertain to the topic; thus, an entry on stream of consciousness would likely mention Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. However, the goal is to supply the specialist and graduate student with authoritative accounts of novel genres, national histories, and terms like heteroglossia and indirect discourse.

Because of the collaborative nature of the project, the Encyclopedia's success as a reference source is going to depend on editorial controls over soliciting, harvesting, and reviewing contributions, so as to maintain a consistently high level of quality. This will be accomplished by using four editors: a general editor and three associate editors, chosen for recognized expertise in different areas. This editorial group will settle on a final selection of entries and generate a list of potential contributors. Contributions will be reviewed by the associate editor responsible for that area, and be either returned for revision or forwarded to the general editor for a second review. The Princeton Encyclopedia (including the second edition) follows a similar editorial procedure and adds an outside referee, similar to the peer review system for journal articles. Given the consistently high quality of their entries, this review system has a lot to recommend it.

In most cases, articles will be assigned in three lengths: 1000, 3000, and 5000 words, including brief bibliographies. To avoid the fragmentation of hundreds of small definitions scattered throughout the volume, preference will be given to longer, synthetic articles with integrated subtopics. Those subtopics can then be included as blind entries within the alphabetical flow of the Encyclopedia.

Entries can be conceptually divided into three large areas, which I describe below.

1. National histories of the novel Historical entries describe the development of novels and novel writing in different areas of the world. Separate entries discuss the different traditions in the individual European countries, the United States, Canada, Latin American and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and the South Pacific. Particular attention will be paid to defining the unique qualities the novel assumes in different cultures and the events contributing to its development. In Central and South America, for example, these include the indigenismo novel, Brazilian modernism, and the Boom; discussions of countries in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa would need to consider completely different issues: the role of orality in the colonial era, the négritude movement, and linguistic decolonization in post-colonial times. I would also like to see entries on major terms used in the standard histories of the novel, like Watt's formal realism and Brown's institutions, and articles on differences in the definition of the novel as a genre.

2. Formal elements of the novel The largest single category of entries consists of those explaining technical aspects of the genre. Some articles will cover elements within novels: story, plot, character, narrator, implied author, and framing devices. Others will need to address genre categories common to many literatures, like realism, naturalism, künstlerroman, bildungsroman, picaresque, epistolary, and the graphic novel. In general, genres particular to national traditions will be discussed within those articles and cross-referenced through blind entries: the bluestocking novel in England, the American western, and the novela de la tierra in Latin America. A third type of entry will consider issues of style, like diction, imagery, figurative language, and rhetoric, as they relate to novel writing. Entries on the theory of the novel and its terminology would be the final class of entries in this category. These will include a combination of broad, synthetic articles on narrative theory, narratology, competing definitions of the novel, and genre theory. Other articles would explain major schools of novel theory: Bakhtinian, feminist, modernist, and Marxist, among others. The goal in these articles is not to serve as a substitute for a guide to literary theory in general, but to describe unfamiliar terms and critical premises that scholars of the novel are likely to encounter.

3. Correlate areas and book history The novel's relationship to other arts and disciplines--philosophy, religion, music, science--needs to be discussed, where relevant to the genre's history or form. Other topics in this category are those on book history. Because poetry traditionally has been considered separately from the material conditions of its production, the Princeton Encyclopedia has no entries on "printing," "publishing," "paper," or even "manuscript" or "quill pen." The novel differs from poetry in this regard; it has an intimate relationship to the mediating role of print, and that relationship has consistently contributed to the content of the genre. Serial publication led to a specific pace in the development of plot, for example, because something had to happen in each installment. In many post-colonial contexts, early attempts to write novels in indigenous languages were delayed by the impracticality of publishing works without sales in the former home market. Other forces contributing to the shape of the novel are copyright, libel, and censorship laws. The novel is thus more similar to drama in this area than it is to poetry: it is written for public consumption, and so material conditions affecting its production and circulation need to be addressed.