antinovel

antinovel

a type of prose fiction in which conventional or traditional novelistic elements are rejected

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Antinovel

 

an accepted concept used along with the term “new novel” to characterize certain genres in the prose of modernism. The “antinovel” is to be found primarily among French writers of the late 1940’s and 1950’s—for example, S. Beckett, A. Robbe-Grillet, N. Sar-raute, and M. Butor. Having declared a break with the realistic novel in its classical forms (hence the term “anti-novel”), the representatives of the “new novel” also rejected the developed plot, the hero with an integral inner world and character, and the portrayal of any coherent picture of social struggle.

G. K. KOSIKOV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.