Technologies of the Novel: Quantitative Data and the Evolution of Literary Systems

290 Pages·2020·21.719 MB·English

by  Nicholas D. Paige

Technologies of the Novel
Quantitative Data and the Evolution of
Literary Systems
Nicholas D. Paige

Technologies of the Novel
Based on a systematic sampling of nearly 2000 French and English novels from
1601 to 1830, this book’s foremost aim is to ask precisely how the novel evolved.
Instead of simply ‘rising’, as scholars have been saying for some sixty years, the
novel is in fact a system in constant flux, made up of artifacts – formally distinct
novel types – that themselves rise, only to inevitably fall. Nicholas D. Paige
argues that these artifacts are technologies, each with traceable origins, each
needing time for adoption (at the expense of already developed technologies)
and also for abandonment. Like technological waves in more physical domains,
the rises and falls of novelistic technologies don’t happen automatically: writers
invent and adopt literary artifacts for many diverse reasons. However, looking
not at individual works but at the novel as a patterned system provides a
startlingly persuasive new way of understanding the history and evolution of
artforms.
nicholas d. paige, Professor of French at the University of California–
Berkeley, is the author of Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel (2011),
awarded the 2013 ASECS Gottschalk prize, and Being Interior: Autobiography
and the Contradictions of Modernity (2001). Technologies of the Novel was
supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Technologies of the Novel
Quantitative Data and the Evolution of Literary
Systems
nicholas d. paige
University of California
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06-04/06, Singapore 079906
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108835503
DOI: 10.1017/9781108890861
© Nicholas Paige 2021
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2021
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Paige, Nicholas D., 1966- author.
Title: Technologies of the novel: quantitative data and the evolution of literary systems / Nicholas D. Paige.
Description: New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024228 (print) | LCCN 2020024229 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108835503 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781108812849 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108890861 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Fiction–History and criticism–Data processing. | French fiction–Research–Data processing. |
English fiction–Research–Data processing.
Classification: LCC PN3331 .P33 2020 (print) | LCC PN3331 (ebook) | DDC 808.3–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024228
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024229a
ISBN 978-1-108-83550-3 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-81284-9 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
I dedicate this book to its most indefatigable supporters –
Becky Curry, for whom it may have seemed like a lifetime
coming; and Wyatt Paige, for whom it really has been.

The segmentation of history is still an arbitrary and conventional
matter, governed by no verifiable conception of historical entities
and their durations. Now and in the past, most of the time the
majority of people live by borrowed ideas and upon traditional
accumulations, yet at every moment the fabric is being undone
and a new one is woven to replace the old, while from time to time
the whole pattern shakes and quivers, settling into new shapes and
figures. These processes of change are all mysterious uncharted
regions where the traveler soon loses direction and stumbles in
darkness.
George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of
Things (1962)
vii