Mannerist Fiction: Pathologies of Space from Rabelais to Pynchon

by William Donoghue

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Published: March 2014

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Imprint: University of Toronto Press

Page Count: 200 Pages

Dimensions: 6.00 x 9.00

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200 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

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$68.00

ISBN: 9781442669772

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In Mannerist Fiction, William Donoghue re-conceptualizes the history of formalism in western literature. Rather than presuming that literary experimentation with form – distorting space and time – began in the twentieth century with Modernism, Donoghue identifies the age of Copernicus as the crucible for the first experiments in spatial de-formation, which appeared in mannerist painting and literature. With wide-ranging erudition, Mannerist Fiction connects these literary and pictorial developments and traces their repetition and evolution over the next five hundred years.

Time and again, Donoghue explains, scientific and literary paradigm shifts have occurred in parallel. Rabelais and Jonson wrote in the aftermath of changes in the western sense of space wrought by Copernicus and the voyages of discovery, Jonathan Swift and the Marquis de Sade in the age of Newton, Thomas Pynchon in the age of Einstein. With his analysis, Donoghue establishes disfigurement and deformation as perennial sources of literary fascination.

William Donoghue is an associate professor in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing Department at Emerson College.

Introduction

Part 1 – Big People and Little People: Two Cases of Disproportion

Chapter 1 – Rabelais and Mannerism

Chapter 2 – Swift and Commensuratio

Part 2 – Pathologies of Deformation: Jonson, Sade, Pynchon

Chapter 3 – Narcissism: Jonson and the Disfigured Self

Chapter 4 – Sade and the Deformed Body

Chapter 5 – Hysteria: Pynchon’s Cartoon Space

Part 3 – Back to the Future: From Picasso to Aristotle

Chapter 6 – Modernism and Mannerism

Chapter 7 – Space and Time for the Ancients

Notes

Bibliography

Index

‘Donoghue takes his readers on a vast tour that is sure to expose them to things they have never before contemplated in light of "mannerist" invention.’
Jesse Wolfe, Kritikon Litterarum vol 44:1-2:2017

“There is a lot to like about William Donoghue’s Mannerist Fiction. The organizing theme is original and convincing, the readings of fiction in the context of the history of science are strong, and the book contains some wonderful surprises.”
Michael D. Bristol, Greenshields Professor Emeritus in English Literature, McGill University

“Mannerist Fiction is an impressive piece of literary scholarship. William Donoghue displays a remarkably wide-ranging erudition, and his readings are deeply engaged, provocative, and even paradigm-bending in their own right.”
David Porter, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan

Literary Studies / English Literature (18th century)

Literary Studies / English Literature (19th Century)

Literary Studies / French Literature

Literary Studies / English Literature (20th & 21st century)