It takes the average reader 5 hours and 2 minutes to read Before Fiction by Nicholas D. Paige
Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more
Fiction has become nearly synonymous with literature itself, as if Homer and Dante and Pynchon were all engaged in the same basic activity. But one difficulty with this view is simply that a literature trafficking in openly invented characters is a quite recent development. Novelists before the nineteenth century ceaselessly asserted that their novels were true stories, and before that, poets routinely took their basic plots and heroes from the past. We have grown accustomed to thinking of the history of literature and the novel as a progression from the ideal to the real. Yet paradoxically, the modern triumph of realism is also the triumph of a literature that has shed all pretense to literalness. Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel offers a new understanding of the early history of the genre in England and France, one in which writers were not slowly discovering a type of fictionality we now take for granted but rather following a distinct set of practices and rationales. Nicholas D. Paige reinterprets Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves, Rousseau's Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, Diderot's La Religieuse, and other French texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in light of the period's preoccupation with literal truth. Paige argues that novels like these occupied a place before fiction, a pseudofactual realm that in no way leads to modern realism. The book provides an alternate way of looking at a familiar history, and in its very idiom and methodology charts a new course for how we should study the novel and think about the evolution of cultural forms.
Before Fiction by Nicholas D. Paige is 301 pages long, and a total of 75,551 words.
This makes it 102% the length of the average book. It also has 92% more words than the average book.
The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 6 hours and 52 minutes to read Before Fiction aloud.
Before Fiction is suitable for students ages 12 and up.
Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.
When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.
Before Fiction by Nicholas D. Paige is sold by several retailers and bookshops. However, Read Time works with Amazon to provide an easier way to purchase books.
To buy Before Fiction by Nicholas D. Paige on Amazon click the button below.
Buy Before Fiction on Amazon