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The novel-essay emerged in France, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and reached its highest formal complexity in Austria and Germany, during the interwar period. Here, Ercolino argues that it is crucial for a renovated understating of the history of the novel in modernity.

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Introduction PART I 1. Beyond Naturalist Aesthetics 2. The Critique of Modern Rationality 3. The Emergence of the Novel-Essay PART II 1. A Morphological Changeover 2. Mimicry 3. Dialectical Strains PART III 1. Philosophical Mimesis 2. Totality and the Grand Style 3. The Tear of History PART IV: FORM AND IDEOLOGY Works Cited

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Stefano Ercolino is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Underwood International College, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. A former Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University, USA, and DAAD Postdoctoral Fellow in the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, he is the author of The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchon´s "Gravity´s Rainbow" to Roberto Bola¤o´s "2666."

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