Utopia on the Horizons of Time in Lukácss The Theory of the Novel Essa

Utopia on the Horizons of Time in Lukà ¡cs's The Theory of the Novel Time is a pivotal term in Georg Lukà ¡cs's The Theory of the Novel for two reasons: the text's "time" describes the time of the novel (the time depicted in novels as described by Lukà ¡cs), but it also bears reflexively on the chronology, or the history of literary forms, which the text itself describes. These readings are not easily separable; The Theory of the Novel must be read as a self-description, as a "theoretical novel" itself (as Freud called Moses and Monotheism), though one whose plot is about the history of forms or the development of plot in human history. That is, both meanings of the title's double genitive must be sustained in a reading of this text; we must look for theory at once about and within the novel, both described and prescribed by the novel. The first question posed by such a reading might be: What is the plot of this novel about The Theory of the Novel? On cursory reading, it seems to be a lapsarian or nostalgic fable of the decline of the epic into the novel. The story it tells is certainly dominated by the refrain "no longer" and an appeal to the simplicity of origins and times gone by, a lament for the separation of meaning from life which marked the fall from the epic into the novel. But this simple chronology itself, this periodization, cannot be sustained: [T]he old parallelism of the transcendental structure of the form-giving subject and the world of created forms has been destroyed, and the ultimate basis of artistic creation has become homeless. ...[T]he novel form is, like no other, an expression of this transcendental homelessness. For the Greeks the fact that their history and the philosophy of history coincided ... ...tion that always keeps trying to "embrace and adorn" life though repulsed; but it can at least be imagined, even acted upon, grounded in "authentic, fruitful, and progressive opposition" (22). As the author of The Theory of the Novel himself warned (123), it is a mistake either purely to romanticize or purely to ironize the youthful failure, for both views must be sustained at once: the utopian and the despairing, the backward glance to the setting sun and the way toward a glimmer of dawn that just might be touching the horizon ahead. Works Cited Benjamin, Walter. "The Storyteller." In Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Lukà ¡cs, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971. Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. Trans. International Publishers. New York: International Publishers, 1970.