The Technology of the Novel: Writing and Narrative in British Fiction

摘要

When The Technology of the Novel does not read like a series of footnotes to Plato, who disparaged writing through his mouthpiece Socrates, it resembles confessions from a therapist's couch as canonical British novelists admit to skepticism about their enterprises. Tony E. Jackson's purpose, however, is to analyze the ways that storytelling capitulates to the technology of writing until hybrid media subsume narrative communication. Although Jackson distinguishes writing not only from language, but also from print, he declines to factor in mass production of novels, hoping instead to recapture the essential features of oral recitation and alphabetic writing before subsequent media alter them.