Plotlessness
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"À rebours can scarcely be called a novel, and Huysmans, in fact, does not call it so. It does not reveal a history, it has no action, but presents itself as a sort of portrayal or biography of a man whose habits, sympathies and antipathies, and ideas on all possible subjects, specially on art and literature, are related to us in great detail. This man is called Des Esseintes, and is the last scion of an ancient French ducal title."--Degeneration (1892) by Max Nordau |
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Plotlessness refers to fiction lacking plots. Plotlessness was uncommon before the 20th century, but in modernist literature, plot was secondary to philosophical introspection. Taking this to the extreme, the anti-novel was an evolution of the mid twentieth century.
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Plotless literature
18th century
- Tristram Shandy (1759), Laurence Sterne
- A Journey Around My Room (1794) by Xavier de Maistre
19th century
- Notes from the Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881) by Flaubert
- À rebours (1884) by Huysmans
- Elbow-Room; A Novel Without a Plot (1876) is a novel by Charles Heber Clark
20th century
In modernist literature, plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. Taking this to the extreme, we come to the anti-novel of the mid twentieth century.
Examples
- Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
- In Search of Lost Time (1913 - 1927 ) by Proust
- Raymond Carver’s short stories
- Nicholson Baker's novels
Plot-driven literature
See also
- Boredom
- Digression
- Narratology
- Psychological novel
- Stream of consciousness
- Sketch story
- Non-narrative film