Dickens, Manzoni, Zola, and James : the impossible romance
Abstract
The unrivaled power and tension in the best works of Dickens, Manzoni, Zola, and James are derived precisely from the authors' imaginative experimentation with the dialectic structure of this perpetual opposition. Unlike so many other novelists of the nineteenth century who characteristically suffered assimilation to generic and historic conventions, they were able to endure the "internal disturbances" attendant not upon willed mediation but upon willed refusal of mediation.
Table of Contents
Source and solution -- The salvational mode -- Between two gospels -- Suit and service -- Difficulties of relationship and form.