New Release Books by Gerd Bayer

Novel horizons analyses how narrative prose fiction developed during the English Restoration. It argues that after 1660, generic changes within dramatic texts occasioned an intense debate within prologues and introductions. This discussion about the poetics of a genre was echoed in the paratextual material of prose fictions. In the absence of an official poetics that defined prose fiction, paratexts ful­filled this function and informed readers about the budding genre. This study traces the piecemeal development of these boundaries and describes the generic competence of readers through the analysis of paratexts and prose fictions. Novel horizons covers the surviving textual material widely, focusing on narrative prose fictions published between 1660 and 1710. In addition to tracing the paratextual poetics of Restoration fiction, this book also covers the state of the art of fiction-writing during the period, discussing character development, narrative point of view and questions of fictionality and realism.

John Fowles (1926–2005) is well-known as a seminal British novelist of the post-war period. His stories dealt with questions of moral choices, with the human condition and with the act of writing itself. An exemplar of postmodernism, Fowles is a rare instance of a writer whose work earned both critical respect and popular success. His best-known works include The Collector (1963), The Magus (1966) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The works contained in this critical edition are all previously unpublished and comprise novels, short stories, travelogues and film scripts. The majority of them – including two book-length projects – are finished works. Many of the texts presented in the edition are companion pieces to published works, but some represent departures from Fowles’s canon in both form and theme. The edition is supported by full textual apparatus and will appeal to scholars of literature, film studies and postmodernism.