Homelessness and the novel: Bakhtin, Lukacs and 'The Female Quixote'

The novel has been the most popular and the most problematic genre for contemporary literary study. The critical issues involved in novel criticism are inseparable from the theoretical questions regarding the development of a methodology for the study of the novel. It is essential, therefore, to have the knowledge of a theoretical framework regarding the generic status of the novel in order to avoid some of the methodological pitfalls that are involved in novel criticism. Although Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukacs developed their theories of the novel in the first half of the twentieth century, they are the most influential theorists of the novel today, because their theories offer explanations for several theoretical and methodological pitfalls that critics of the novel face. Within the context of twentieth-century genre theory, this study analyzes in the first part Mikhail Bakhtin's and Georg Lukacs' theories of the novel in The Dialogic Imagination and The Theory of the Novel comparatively. Some of the insights gained through this theoretical analysis are incorporated into a critical reading of Charlotte Lennox's Female Quixote in the second part. As a result, this study establishes that The Female Quixote is a "generic" novel in terms of its uses of irony, parody, and self-reflexivity as defined by Bakhtin and Lukacs in their respective theories.