An antinovel is any
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...
work of
fiction that avoids the familiar conventions of the
novel, and instead establishes its own conventions.
Origin of the term
The term ("anti-roman" in French) was brought into modern literary discourse by the French philosopher and critic
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...
in his introduction to
Nathalie Sarraute
Nathalie Sarraute (; born Natalia Ilinichna Tcherniak ( rus, Ната́лья Ильи́нична Черня́к); – 19 October 1999) was a French writer and lawyer.
Personal life
Sarraute was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk (now Ivanovo), 300&n ...
's 1948 work ''Portrait d’un inconnu'' (Portrait of a Man Unknown).
["New Novel." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 31 Aug. 2012.] However the term "anti-roman" (anti-novel) had been used by
Charles Sorel in 1633 to describe the parodic nature of his prose fiction ''Le Berger extravagant''.
[
]
Characteristics
The antinovel usually fragments and distorts the experience of its characters, presenting events outside of chronological order and attempting to disrupt the idea of characters with unified and stable personalities. Some principal features of antinovels include lack of obvious plot, minimal development of character, variations in time sequence, experiments with vocabulary and syntax, and alternative endings and beginnings.
History
Although the term is most commonly applied to the French '' nouveau roman'' of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, similar traits can be found much further back in literary history. One example is Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and '' A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', publishe ...
's ''Tristram Shandy Tristram may refer to:
Literature
* the title character of ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'', a novel by Laurence Sterne
* the title character of '' Tristram of Lyonesse'', an epic poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
*"Tristr ...
'', a seemingly autobiographical novel that barely makes it as far as the title character's birth thanks to numerous digressions and a rejection of linear chronology.[
Aron Kibédi Varga has suggested that the novel in fact began as an antinovel, since the first novels such as '']Don Quixote
is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of West ...
'' subverted their form even as they were constructing the form of the novel.[Dionne U, Gingras F. L'USURE ORIGINELLE DU ROMAN: ROMAN ET ANTIROMAN DU MOYEN AGE A LA REVOLUTION. (French). Études Françaises. April 2006;42(1):5-12. Accessed August 31, 2012.]
It was however in the postwar decades that the term first came into critical and general prominence. To the middlebrow like C. P. Snow
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow, (15 October 1905 – 1 July 1980) was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government.''The Columbia Encyclope ...
, the antinovel appeared as "an expression of that nihilism that fills the vacuum created by the withdrawal of positive directives for living", and as an ignoble scene in which "the characters buzz about sluggishly like winter flies". More technically however, its distinctive feature was the anti-mimetic and self-reflective drawing of attention to its own fictionality, a parodic anti-realistic element. Paradoxically, such anti-conventionalism would eventually come to form a distinctive convention of its own.[J. Childers ed., ''The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism'' (1995) p. 57]
See also
* '' Nouveau roman''
* Anti-fairy tale
References
Novel forms
{{novel-stub