The Theory of the Novel
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Students and researchers in literary theory and comparative literature
- Intellectual-history readers interested in modernity and the problem of novel form
- Learners who wish to read the German original and practice academic German
- Readers studying Marxist literary theory and Western Marxism
Not a good fit for
- General readers who only want light fiction for leisure and are unused to theoretical language
- Beginners without a foundation in literary history encountering German philosophical prose for the first time
- Readers expecting close-reading methods and practical guides for specific novels
Reading tips
- Read the introduction and Part One first to grasp the overall framework of the epic–novel opposition before moving into specific chapters.
- Prepare a glossary of core concepts such as totality and transcendental homelessness, and review earlier and later passages as needed.
- After finishing, compare with Lukács's later works or related scholarship to see how his problematic and position changed.
- Use the German original alongside a reliable translation; when encountering long sentences, first break down the main clause and then work out the layers of argument.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
FAQ
What background knowledge should I have before reading this book?
How difficult is the German edition for non-native readers?
How does this early work relate to Lukács's later thought?
Comments
Find this book
This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
György Lukács (1885–1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic, author of History and Class Consciousness. His life spanned the multiple upheavals of twentieth-century European thought. His representative work, The Theory of the Novel (Die Theorie des Romans), examines the origins and evolution of the novel as a genre through the lens of the philosophy of history, combining formal analysis with a diagnosis of the spirit of the age, and is regarded as a classic of modern novel theory. Lukács's writing joins philosophical speculation with the delicacy of literary criticism, focusing on the complex relations among consciousness, class, and the historical process. His thought has had a profound influence on Western Marxism, the sociology of literature, and critical theory. One work by him is held in the collection; public information is limited, and this sketch is confined to the known facts.
