ABSTRACT:
In literary history teleologies, even if often unperceived, are seductively attractive. But coincidence and contingency have a more profound effect on the structures with which we think, write and communicate than sometimes we allow. The concatenation of quite unrelated events and material circumstances, having nothing to do whatsoever with writing or literature, can have radical consequences for literary form and for reading. This paper will examine some of the changes in the formal and material structures of the novel in the nineteenth century, and will suggest links between changes in narrative strategies and contemporary technological innovations.
