The Modern Novel

Abstract

The novel has always been modern – always concerned mainly with contemporary life, and, as the name suggests, always after the new thing. But some time around 1900 (or 1910, or 1922), to be modern meant something more, because suddenly modernity meant everything. It seemed to break the world in two, snapping all continuities with the past, putting human character and life itself into a state of constant change. To keep up, the novel also had to snap and to split – to change. And so it became “the modern novel,” breaking with the past, making itself new, to pursue modernity into the future.