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9 The Epic and the Novel (1916)

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The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature
This chapter is in the book The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature
9The Epic and the Novel1 (1916)Georg LukácsBorn in Budapest in 1885 to a German Jewish family, Georg (or György) Lukács spent his life mediating between the political and literary cultures of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe. The young Lukács became a socialist while still a teenager, with a keen interest in contemporary literature and drama, and spent several years in a modern theater group before going to Berlin and Heidelberg to study philosophy and aesthetics. He returned to Budapest in 1915 and founded a progressive literary circle, whose members debated the state of the world amid the crisis of the First World War. An outgrowth of these discussions, his book The Theory of the Novel (1916) is a foundational work for the historical grounding of literary form. Elaborating a homology between forms of social life and literary genres, Lukács argues that the European novel is the literary form proper to an alienated modern social life, in a world no longer suffused with meaning or complete unto itself as was the world of epic. The novel carries on the epic’s function in some ways, but instead of refl ecting the “rounded totality” of immanent meaning, it strives to compensate for the absence of such meaning. The novel is thus at once a product of the human being’s estrangement from society and a creative attempt to construct or reveal the lost totality. Ranging across the entire extent of the European tradition, from ancient Greek epic and tragedy to German lyric and to the Russian novel, Lukács proceeds quasi-associatively, according to what he calls the “method of abstract synthesis.” The
© 2021 Princeton University Press, Princeton

9The Epic and the Novel1 (1916)Georg LukácsBorn in Budapest in 1885 to a German Jewish family, Georg (or György) Lukács spent his life mediating between the political and literary cultures of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe. The young Lukács became a socialist while still a teenager, with a keen interest in contemporary literature and drama, and spent several years in a modern theater group before going to Berlin and Heidelberg to study philosophy and aesthetics. He returned to Budapest in 1915 and founded a progressive literary circle, whose members debated the state of the world amid the crisis of the First World War. An outgrowth of these discussions, his book The Theory of the Novel (1916) is a foundational work for the historical grounding of literary form. Elaborating a homology between forms of social life and literary genres, Lukács argues that the European novel is the literary form proper to an alienated modern social life, in a world no longer suffused with meaning or complete unto itself as was the world of epic. The novel carries on the epic’s function in some ways, but instead of refl ecting the “rounded totality” of immanent meaning, it strives to compensate for the absence of such meaning. The novel is thus at once a product of the human being’s estrangement from society and a creative attempt to construct or reveal the lost totality. Ranging across the entire extent of the European tradition, from ancient Greek epic and tragedy to German lyric and to the Russian novel, Lukács proceeds quasi-associatively, according to what he calls the “method of abstract synthesis.” The
© 2021 Princeton University Press, Princeton

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. TRANSLATION/ TRANSNATION ii
  3. CONTENTS v
  4. INTRODUCTION ix
  5. PART ONE ORIGINS
  6. 1 Results of a Comparison of Different Peoples’ Poetry in Ancient and Modern Times (1797) 1
  7. 2 Of the General Spirit of Modern Literature (1800) 10
  8. 3 Conversations on World Literature (1827) 17
  9. 4 From The Birth of Tragedy (1872) 26
  10. 5 Present Tasks of Comparative Literature (1877) 41
  11. 6 The Comparative Method and Literature (1886) 50
  12. 7 World Literature (1899) 61
  13. 8 From What Is Comparative Literature? (1903) 67
  14. PA R T TWO THE YEARS OF CRISIS
  15. 9 The Epic and the Novel (1916) 81
  16. 10 Chaos in the Literary World (1934) 92
  17. 11 From Epic and Novel (1941) 104
  18. 12 Preface to European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948) 120
  19. 13 Philology and Weltliteratur (1952) 125
  20. 14 From Minima Moralia (1951) 139
  21. 15 Poetry, Society, State (1956) 150
  22. 16 Preface to La Littérature comparée (1951) 158
  23. 17 The Crisis of Comparative Literature (1959) 161
  24. PART THREE THE THEORY YEARS
  25. 18 The Structuralist Activity (1963) 175
  26. 19 Women’s Time (1977) 183
  27. 20 Semiology and Rhetoric (1973) 208
  28. 21 Writing (1990) 227
  29. 22 The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem (1978) 240
  30. 23 Cross-Cultural Poetics: National Literatures (1981) 248
  31. 24 The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983) 259
  32. 25 The Quest for Relevance (1986) 284
  33. PART FOUR CONTEMPORARY EXPLORATIONS
  34. 26 Comparative Cosmopolitanism (1992) 309
  35. 27 Literature, Nation, and Politics (1999) 329
  36. 28 Comparative Literature in China (2000) 341
  37. 29 From Translation, Community, Utopia (2000) 358
  38. 30 Crossing Borders (2003) 380
  39. 31 Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur (2006) 399
  40. 32 A New Comparative Literature (2006) 409
  41. BIBLIOGRAPHIES 421
  42. CREDITS 431
  43. INDEX 435
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400833702-011

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. TRANSLATION/ TRANSNATION ii
  3. CONTENTS v
  4. INTRODUCTION ix
  5. PART ONE ORIGINS
  6. 1 Results of a Comparison of Different Peoples’ Poetry in Ancient and Modern Times (1797) 1
  7. 2 Of the General Spirit of Modern Literature (1800) 10
  8. 3 Conversations on World Literature (1827) 17
  9. 4 From The Birth of Tragedy (1872) 26
  10. 5 Present Tasks of Comparative Literature (1877) 41
  11. 6 The Comparative Method and Literature (1886) 50
  12. 7 World Literature (1899) 61
  13. 8 From What Is Comparative Literature? (1903) 67
  14. PA R T TWO THE YEARS OF CRISIS
  15. 9 The Epic and the Novel (1916) 81
  16. 10 Chaos in the Literary World (1934) 92
  17. 11 From Epic and Novel (1941) 104
  18. 12 Preface to European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948) 120
  19. 13 Philology and Weltliteratur (1952) 125
  20. 14 From Minima Moralia (1951) 139
  21. 15 Poetry, Society, State (1956) 150
  22. 16 Preface to La Littérature comparée (1951) 158
  23. 17 The Crisis of Comparative Literature (1959) 161
  24. PART THREE THE THEORY YEARS
  25. 18 The Structuralist Activity (1963) 175
  26. 19 Women’s Time (1977) 183
  27. 20 Semiology and Rhetoric (1973) 208
  28. 21 Writing (1990) 227
  29. 22 The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem (1978) 240
  30. 23 Cross-Cultural Poetics: National Literatures (1981) 248
  31. 24 The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983) 259
  32. 25 The Quest for Relevance (1986) 284
  33. PART FOUR CONTEMPORARY EXPLORATIONS
  34. 26 Comparative Cosmopolitanism (1992) 309
  35. 27 Literature, Nation, and Politics (1999) 329
  36. 28 Comparative Literature in China (2000) 341
  37. 29 From Translation, Community, Utopia (2000) 358
  38. 30 Crossing Borders (2003) 380
  39. 31 Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur (2006) 399
  40. 32 A New Comparative Literature (2006) 409
  41. BIBLIOGRAPHIES 421
  42. CREDITS 431
  43. INDEX 435
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