Motives for Fiction

by Robert Alter

Book Overview

"For many serious readers," Robert Alter writes in his preface, "the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so." In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers.

Alter explores very different sorts of novels, from the self-conscious artifices of Sterne and Nabokov to...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674587626
• ISBN13: 9780674587625
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.6"