The Grounds of the Novel - by Daniel Wright (Paperback)

About the Book

"What grounds the fictional world of a novel? Or is such a world peculiarly groundless? In a powerful engagement with the latest debates in novel theory, Daniel Wright investigates how novelists reckon with the ontological status of their works. Philosophers who debate whether fictional worlds exist take the novel as an ontological problem to be solved; instead, Wright reveals the novel as a genre of immanent ontological critique. Wright argues that the novel imagines its own metaphysical "grounds" through figuration, understanding fictional being as self-sufficient, cohesive, and alive, rather than as beholden to the actual world as an existential anchor. Through philosophically attuned close readings of novels and reflections on writerly craft by Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Colson Whitehead, Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, Henry James, and Akwaeke Emezi, Wright shares an impassioned vision of reading as stepping into ontologically terraformed worlds, and of literary criticism as treading and re-treading the novel's grounds"--

Book Synopsis

What grounds the fictional world of a novel? Or is such a world peculiarly groundless? In a powerful engagement with the latest debates in novel theory, Daniel Wright investigates how novelists reckon with the ontological status of their works. Philosophers who debate whether fictional worlds exist take the novel as an ontological problem to be solved; instead, Wright reveals the novel as a genre of immanent ontological critique.

Wright argues that the novel imagines its own metaphysical "grounds" through figuration, understanding fictional being as self-sufficient, cohesive, and alive, rather than as beholden to the actual world as an existential anchor. Through philosophically attuned close readings of novels and reflections on writerly craft by Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Colson Whitehead, Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, Henry James, and Akwaeke Emezi, Wright shares an impassioned vision of reading as stepping into ontologically terraformed worlds, and of literary criticism as treading and re-treading the novel's grounds.

Review Quotes

"Wright's examination of the foundations of world begins as an aggrieved riposte to the blanket dismissal of fictional worlds; to describe the contours of fictional worlds is also, implicitly, to promote a more inclusive understanding of what worlds are, that is, to recognize that our being in the world is governed by various fictions, and to acknowledge the harm that results in denying reality to people's experience." --Katarzyna Bartoszyńska, CLCWeb

"The Grounds of the Novel is a deep and innovative book that uses novels to pose questions often left to metaphysics." --Anna Henchman, Nineteenth-Century Literature

"No paraphrase can do justice to the evocative, precise, poetic language of this book. I am deeply grateful for the quality of this writing, not only for the pleasure of reading it, but also for the way it inspires us to write better ourselves. At the same time, The Grounds of the Novel will teach you a way of thinking about the novel you will never be able to unsee." --Talia Schaffer, Victorian Studies

"One of the chief pleasures of The Grounds of the Novel is Wright's tangible love of the literature he writes about and his keen desire to defend its reality and its significance, if not its actuality. This is a book that grows out of deep, personal connections with literature and the desire to validate those connections." --Natalie McKnight, Studies in the Novel

"When I say that Daniel Wright's The Grounds of the Novel is a foundational, field-(re)defining study, I mean to do more than applaud Wright for intervening so effectively into novel studies and studies of literature and philosophy--though this book does provide tools we might use to rebuild both those enterprises from the ground up. I am also referencing the ambitious redescription of the novel genre this book offers as it highlights the ontological preoccupations of realist writing." --Diedre Lynch, Critical Inquiry

"The Grounds of the Novel is an exceptionally bold and brave work that pushes our understanding of the essence of fiction in new directions. This utterly original book will interest all scholars of the novel, particularly students of radical ontology." --Adela Pinch, University of Michigan

"Daniel Wright's fascinating new study The Grounds of the Novel argues that novel worlds have even stranger ontological foundations than ours.... This book examines what lies 'all the way down' beneath novels, bearing up the soil on which characters walk. For Wright, the strange ontological foundations of novelistic worlds become a 'resource' for thinking through our own ambiguities and ethics of being." --Timothy Gao, Review 19

"In this lyrical and intimate book, Wright invites us to look again at what metaphors of fictional being might do. Reconfiguring the metaphysics of the novel across time, he lays new groundwork for the intersection of personal and philosophical criticism." --David James, University of Birmingham

"This is a bold ontological reframing of the novel--not a problem to be solved, but a world to be explored. Highly recommended." --S. J. Shaw, CHOICE

About the Author

Daniel Wright is Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto and the author of Bad Logic: Reasoning about Desire in the Victorian Novel (2018).