Two centuries of the English novel: A co-authored monograph. In celebration of Prof. B. M. Proskurnin’s 70th anniversary

Abstract

In focus of this review is a co-authored monograph that examines novels by 19th to 21st c. English authors in order to trace the key evolutionary changes of this world literature’s most popular genre. In his introduction entitled ‘A well-made English novel’ [‘Khorosho sdelanniy angliyskiy roman’], Prof. B. Proskurnin shares several constructive ideas. He mentions that, at the very outset, the single requirement for the contributors was that they should choose the authors who interest them the most and inspire a study of their oeuvre through the prism of preserving the national genre memory and as an innovator of the genre. The volume explores unique artistic characteristics of the selected works which represent milestones in the history of the novel and sheds light on the functioning of the English novelistic tradition, nurtured by the creativity and innovative approach of writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Antony Trollope, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, David Herbert Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, and Hilary Mantel.