ABSTRACT
This book offers to delineate a key phenomenon in contemporary Anglophone fiction: novel expansion, when the plot and characters from a finished novel are retrieved to be developed in new adventures set before, after or during the narrative time of the source-text. If autographic and allographic sequels are almost as old as literature, prequels – that imagine the anteriority of a narrative – and coquels – that develop secondary characters in the same story time as the source-text – are more recent. The overall trend for novel expansion spread in the mid-1980s and 1990s and has since shown no sign of abating.
This volume is organised following three types of relationships to the source-texts even if these occasionally combine to produce a more complex structure. This book comprises 11 essays, preceded by an introduction, that examine narrative strategies, aesthetic, ethical and political tendencies underlying these novel expansions. Following the overview provided in the introduction, the reader will find case studies of prequels, coquels and sequels before a final chapter that encompasses them all and more.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|2 pages
Prequels
chapter 1|13 pages
Prequel Ontology and Temporality
chapter 2|12 pages
Wide Sargasso Sea as a Prequel to Jane Eyre
part II|2 pages
Coquels
chapter 4|16 pages
A Coquel Set ‘far away, where the fighting was’
chapter 6|15 pages
Sensibly Organized
part III|2 pages
Sequels
part IV|2 pages
Prequels, Coquels, Sequels and Beyond