The Literature Network - Anamorphic Realism: Veridictory Plots in Balzac, Dostoevsky, and Henry James

Anamorphic Realism: Veridictory Plots in Balzac, Dostoevsky, and Henry James

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From: Comparative Literature
Date: 20071001
Author:Kliger, Ilya

THIS ESSAY IDENTIFIES AND EXPLORES a prominent plot pattern in realist fiction, a "structure of knowing" that I propose to call anamorphic by analogy with the practice of anamorphosis in visual art. In what follows, I demonstrate how this pattern functions as an immanent critique of some of the b asic presuppositions underlying the narrative-ideological shape of the realist novel. I also situate this formal figure within the wider field of novelistic conceptions of socialization, distinguishing the anamorphic plot from the plots of desiring ambition, dialogic perspectivalism, and ascent to ...

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