Is the Novel Problematic? A Contribution To the Theory of the Novel
In the midst of the modern world there is an unremitting search for epic materials: Frank Norris is convinced that he has found them in the American Wild West.
Abstract
The 19th century is the period of the triumph of the novel: “the bourgeois epic” leaves behind all of its aging competitors. Not only are there tireless efforts to revive epic poetry, a non-novelistic genre, but artistic judgment (often even that of the great novelists themselves) is full of doubts with respect to the triumphant new genre. In the midst of the modern world there is an unremitting search for epic materials. Thus, Frank Norris is convinced that he has found them in the American Wild West. Criticism typically evaluates Tolstoy's novels by comparing them with the epic; and the Russian novelist finds this all the more flattering as he, like Hegel, loves, of all epic works, the stories of Homer and of the Old Testament.