Genre and Extravagance

Abstract

This chapter outlines the theme running through the book as a whole: hybrid form and extravagant execution of narrative designs have accompanied the novel throughout its history. The canonical “great novels” have therefore been exceptions to any presumed rule that would define the parameters of the novel as genre. These exceptions equivocate between history and fiction, fantasy and reality, and by so doing establish the sui generis as a paradoxically normative venture within the literary domain of the novel. As a relatively late development in literary history, the novel lacks the defining parameters set out for other genres in antiquity. It has therefore thrived by assimilating material from any and all other genres, blending them into hybrid examples that become canonical by being unrepeatable.