A collection of essays on the theory of the novel. There are selections from Frye, Benjamin, Levi-Strauss, Lukacs, Bakhtin, and other prominent theorists, exploring the historical significance of the novel as a genre, from its early beginnings to its modern variations in the postmodern novel and postcolonial novel. The work also presents a provocative argument for studying the genre of the novel. In Michael McKeon's introduction to the volume and in headnotes to each selection, he argues that genre theory and history provide the best approach to understanding the novel. All the selections in this anthology date from the 20th century - most from the last 40 years of it - and represent the attempts of different theorists, and different theoretical schools, to describe the historical stages of the genre's formal development.