Abstract
At the level of genre, fiction and reality find their respective equivalents in the novel and the newspaper. Fiction as genre meets its opposite in reality as genre, that is, in nonfiction. And yet the novel and the newspaper are the two genres in which nations imagine themselves, according to Benedict Anderson’s theory of nationalism. For Anderson, the novel and the newspaper narrate worlds readers can easily locate in the extratextual world. Yet this world is itself partly created by the two genres. Using shifters such as we and today, the genres designate their own reception, which depends on their circulation: the nation is comprised of whoever uptakes the shifters. These shifters, however, not the two genres as such, are sharing the fate of nationalism in post-nationalist times.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). Epic and novel: Toward a methodology for the study of the novel. In The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed., C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans., pp. 3–40). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (C. Emerson, Ed., & Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Benveniste, É. (1971). Subjectivity in language. In Problems in general linguistics (M. E. Meek, Trans., pp. 223–230). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.
Bernhard, T. (1982). Wittgensteins Neffe: Eine Freundschhaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Bernhard, T. (1988). Wittgenstein’s nephew: A friendship (D. McLintock, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Bloom, H. (1994). The Western canon: The books and school of the ages. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co.
Bourdieu, P. (1995). The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field (S. Emanuel, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Casanova, P. (2004). The world republic of letters (M. B. DeBevoise, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chatterjee, P. (1999). Anderson’s utopia. Diacritics, 29(4), 128–134.
Culler, J. (1999). Anderson and the novel. Diacritics, 29(4), 20–39.
Davis, L. J. (1983). Factual fictions: The origins of the English novel. New York: Columbia University Press.
Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning and the new international (P. Kamuf, Trans.). New York and London: Routledge.
Diderot, D. (1964). Rameau’s nephew. In Rameau’s nephew, and other works (R. H. Bowen, Ed., J. Barzun & R. H. Bowen, Trans., pp. 8–87). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.
Diderot, D. (1989). Le neveu de Rameau. In Œuvres complètes. Tome XII (H. Dieckmann & J. Varloot, Eds., pp. 69–196). Paris: Hermann.
Eco, U. (1986). Dreaming of the Middle Ages. In Travels in hyperreality (W. Weaver, Trans., pp. 61–72). San Diego: Harcourt.
Eco, U. (1987). “Dreaming of the Middle Ages”: An unpublished fragment. Semiotica, 63(1–2), 239.
Eisenstein, E. L. (1968). Some conjectures about the impact of printing on Western society and thought: A preliminary report. The Journal of Modern History, 40(1), 1–56.
Eisenstein, E. L. (2005). The printing revolution in early modern Europe (New ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gallagher, C. (2006). The rise of fictionality. In F. Moretti (Ed.), The novel. Volume 1: History, geography, and culture (pp. 336–363). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gupta, S. (2012). Contemporary literature: The basics. London: Routledge.
Hajdu, P. (2010). Ethnicism, land, and city. In L. Vajdová & R. Gáfrik (Eds.), ‘New imagined communities’: Identity making in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (pp. 127–133). Bratislava: Kalligram.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1998). Jenaer Notizenbuch (1803–1806). In Gesammelte Werke. Band 5: Schriften und Entwürfe (1799–1808) (M. Baum & K. R. Meist, Eds., pp. 483–508). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.
Hitchcock, P. (2009). The long space: Transnationalism and postcolonial form. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Jakobson, R. (1971). Shifters, verbal categories, and the Russian verb. In S. Rudy (Ed.), Selected writings II: Word and language (pp. 130–147). The Hague: Mouton.
Jameson, F. (1986). Third-world literature in the era of multinational capitalism. Social text, 15, 65–88.
Jameson, F. (2013). The antinomies of realism. London: Verso.
Jay, P. (2010). Global matters: The transnational turn in literary studies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
McHale, B. (1987). Postmodernist fiction. New York: Methuen.
Miller, J.-A. (2003). Le neveu de Lacan. In Le neveu de Lacan : satire (pp. 61–101). Paris: Verdier.
Moretti, F. (2000). Conjectures on world literature. New Left Review, II/1, 55–68.
Moretti, F. (2013). The bourgeois: Between history and literature. London: Verso.
Nussbaum, M. C. (1995). Poetic justice: The literary imagination and public life. Boston: Beacon Press.
Redfield, M. (1999). Imagi-nation: The imagined community and the aesthetics of mourning. Diacritics, 29(4), 58–83.
Shavit, U. (2009). The new imagined community: Global media and the construction of national and Muslim identities of migrants. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
Stockhammer, R. (2016). Novel cosmopolitan writing: On the genus and the genre of mankind (in Kant and Wieland). In J. Habjan & F. Imlinger (Eds.), Globalizing literary genres: Literature, history, modernity (pp. 75–89). New York: Routledge.
Vermeulen, P. (2015). Contemporary literature and the end of the novel: Creature, affect, form. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Habjan, J. Novel fiction, newspaper reality. Neohelicon 43, 461–471 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-016-0356-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-016-0356-7