Presents Western literature from Shakespeare, Dickens, and others, to show how they changed the appearance of literature with new ways of constructing a tale. This book explores what happens when we, as readers, are denied knowledge not only for the sake of suspense, but because ignorance belongs to what we have in common, the human condition.
When Achilles dons his armor, gods and readers alike know the outcome, as does the hero himself. But when the commoner becomes the hero, when, as Dr. Johnson remarked in 1750, the heroes of modern fiction are "leveled with the rest of the world"--now that's a different story. In this ambitious work, Stewart Justman ranges across Western literature from the Iliad and the Odyssey through Cervantes and Shakespeare to Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky to show how such a leveling not only changed the appearance of literature, but made possible new ways of constructing a tale.
