Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel

Download or read book Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel written by Andrew Bennett and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1995 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel argues that the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) is one of the most important, though undervalued, practitioners of the twentieth-century novel in English. This is an innovative study with significant implications for contemporary critical and theoretical writing. The authors contend that Bowen's work calls for a radically new conception of criticism and theory - and of the novel itself. Bowen's ten novels have been viewed as 'society' novels, novels of 'manners', modelled on - but inferior to - the writings of Henry James, E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. But the fundamental strangeness of Bowen's novels has gone largely unacknowledged.