Critical Reconstructions

The subject of this book is interplay of fictions and "the real world", its twelve essays explore and expand ideas of what fiction and reality might be. They ask such questions as: How does fiction communicate truth about the world? What is the connection between perceived historical reality and the linguistic form of narration? How does writing formulate or mediate the tensions between public and private life? Tzvetan Todorov opens the volume by examining wildly imaginative accounts written about early global exploration. The next three essays focus on works by Charles Dickens-Michael H. Levenson on David Copperfield, Robert M. Polhemus on The Old Curiosity Shop, and Roger B. Henkle on Dombey and Son. Three studies of realism follow: by John Bender on Godwin's Caleb Williams; by George Dekker on Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson; and by William M. Chace on Joyce's realism in Ulysses. Joseph Frank and Thomas C. Moser follow with biographical studies of Dostoevsky and Faulkner. Next, Juliet McMaster on Jane Austen's The Watsons and John Henry Raleigh on (Frederick Manning's Her Privates We). The final piece by Said returns us to ideas of travel and exploration, showing the continual intertwining and merging of theory and fiction.