Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Chronological Listing
Preface
Introduction
Part One. The Ancient Novel 
Part Two. The Influence of the Ancient Novel
Part Three. Tropes of the Novel
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

MARGARET ANNE DOODY is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities at Vanderbilt University, where she is Director of the Comparative Literature Program. She is the author of two novels, The Alchemists and Aristotle Detective, as well as other books, including Frances Burney: The Life in the Works (Rutgers University Press, 1988). 

Reviews

Doody, a novelist and the director of Vanderbilt University's comparative literature program, offers a corrective to those who find the origins of the novel in the 16th or 17th century. Challenging the distinction between novel and romance, Doody examines in depth ancient Greek and Roman prose narrative, tracing the novel's transformations through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and 18th century. She shows the continuity between the ancient novel and the modern, as well as the striking affinities between the Western novel and those of Africa, China, and Japan. Her treatment is thorough and sophisticated yet accessible to the general reader. It is also ambitious and one of the few works that can truly claim to look at world literature.‘Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.