Grounds of the Novel

Daniel Wright is Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto and the author of Bad Logic: Reasoning about Desire in the Victorian Novel (2018).

"The Grounds of the Novel is an exceptionally bold and brave work that pushes our understanding of the essence of fiction in new directions. This utterly original book will interest all scholars of the novel, particularly students of radical ontology."—Adela Pinch, University of Michigan "In this lyrical and intimate book, Wright invites us to look again at what metaphors of fictional being might do. Reconfiguring the metaphysics of the novel across time, he lays new groundwork for the intersection of personal and philosophical criticism."—David James, University of Birmingham "This is a bold ontological reframing of the novel—not a problem to be solved, but a world to be explored. Highly recommended."—S. J. Shaw, CHOICE "Daniel Wright's fascinating new study The Grounds of the Novel argues that novel worlds have even stranger ontological foundations than ours.... This book examines what lies 'all the way down' beneath novels, bearing up the soil on which characters walk. For Wright, the strange ontological foundations of novelistic worlds become a 'resource' for thinking through our own ambiguities and ethics of being."—Timothy Gao, Review 19 "When I say that Daniel Wright's The Grounds of the Novel is a foundational, field-(re)defining study, I mean to do more than applaud Wright for intervening so effectively into novel studies and studies of literature and philosophy—though this book does provide tools we might use to rebuild both those enterprises from the ground up. I am also referencing the ambitious redescription of the novel genre this book offers as it highlights the ontological preoccupations of realist writing."—Diedre Lynch, Critical Inquiry

• Preface: The Truth of EarthIntroduction:On What There Is in the Novel1. Groundwork2. Underground3. The Ground Gained4. Meeting Grounds Afterword: BasementAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex