Digressions in European Literature

CORINNE BANCROFT Independent ScholarIAN F. A. BELL Professor of American Literature, University of Keele, UKROSS CHAMBERS former Marvin Felheim Distinguished University Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, USAFLORE COULOUMA Lecturer in English Linguistics, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre, FranceSAMUEL FREDERICK Assistant Professor of German and Film, Clemson University, USAJUDITH HAWLEY Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London, UKJ. J. LONG Professor of German, Durham University, UKLAURA MARCUS Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, UKPETER J. RABINOWITZ Professor of Comparative Literature, USAJEREMY ROBBINS Forbes Professor of Hispanic Studies, University of Edinburgh, UKOLIVIA SANTOVETTI Lecturer in Italian Literature, University of Leeds, UKEDMUND SMYTH Reader in French, Manchester Metropolitan University, UKJEREMY TAMBLING Professor of Literature, University of Manchester, UKMARGARET TOPPING Reader in French, Cardiff University, UKDAVID WALKER Professor of French, University of Sheffield, UK

• Foreword; R.Chambers Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Introduction  The Twists and Turns of Life: Cervantes's Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda ; J.Robbins Digressive and Progressive Movements: Sympathy and Sexuality in Tristram Shandy ; or, Plain Tales; J.Hawley Little Dorrit : Dickens, Circumlocution, Unconscious Thought; J.Tambling Concerning Metaphor, Digression and Rhyme (Fetish Aesthetics and the Walking Poem); R.Chambers Henry James, in Parenthesis; I.F.A.Bell A Slice of Watermelon: The Rhetoric of Digression in Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog ; P.J.Rabinowitz  & C.Bancroft 'Let's forget all I have just said': Diversions and Digressions in Gidean Narratives; D.Walker Errant Eyes: Digression, Metaphor and Desire in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time ; M.Topping Virginia Woolf and Digression: Adventures in Consciousness; L.Marcus   Stealing the Story: Robert Walser's Robber -Novel; S.Frederick Negotiating Tradition: Flann O'Brien's Tales of Digression and Subversion; F.Coulouma 'Going On': Digression and Consciousness in The Beckett Trilogy ; E.J.Smyth Straight Line or Aimless Wandering? Italo Calvino's Way to Digression; O.Santovetti Roving with a Compass; Digression, the Novel and the Creative Imagination in Javier Marías; A.Grohmann The Sense of Sebald's Endings...and Beginnings; J.J.Long Index

'Digressions is a collection that works on two levels. As a collection of individual essays it provides much that will interest, while as an extended meditation on digression it offers a collection of material that is hugely suggestive, if not conclusive, and which invites the reader into a pleasantly open-ended and wilfully wayward discussion.' Modern Literary Review'...the volume contains some fascinating new perspectives on the function of digressivity in literature. It is certainly a welcome resource for scholars working in the field of narratology, and should open the way for further academic exploration of the topic.' - French Studies