Cover of The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts

The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts

The articles with which David Lodge entertained and delighted readers of the Independent on Sundayand The Washington Postare now revised, expanded, and collected together in book form.

Read more

The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Time-shift, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and each topic is illustrated by a passage or two taken from classic or modern fiction. Drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James and Martin Amis, Jane Austen and Fay Weldon and Henry Fielding and James Joyce, David Lodge makes accesible to the general reader the richness and variety of British and American fiction. Technical terms, such as Interior Monologue, Metafiction, Intertextuality and the Unreliable Narrator, are lucidly explained and their applications demonstrated.

Bringing to criticism the verve and humour of his own novels, David Lodge has provided essential reading for students of literature, aspiring writers, and anyone who wishes to understand how literature works.

'Here is scholarship made human...There has been no better populist study of fiction since Forster's Aspects of the Novel' - Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times

'Agreeable and highly instructive...a real treat" - David Robson in the Sunday Telegraph

'His texts are useful, unpretentious, accessible...The Art of Fictionis a book for dipping, a book for starting up trains of thought or discussion' - A.S. Byatt in the Sunday Times

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 256 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Free onlineFree
    Aspects of the Novel Shares writing, nonfiction, literary criticism
  2. How Novels Work Shares writing, nonfiction, literary criticism
  3. How Fiction Works Shares writing, nonfiction, literary criticism
  4. 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel Shares writing, nonfiction, books about

“People who read The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts tend to reach for these next.”

  1. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory
  2. How to Read a Poem
  3. The Rhetoric of Fiction
  4. Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education

“If you want more of the same (literary criticism about writers), start with these.”

  1. 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know
  2. Studies in Words
  3. The Nature of Narrative
  4. The Art of the Novel

“If it was the writing that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories
  2. Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
  3. Living by Fiction
  4. Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense
  2. Writing Fiction: An Introduction to the Craft
  3. The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews
  4. The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing