ABSTRACT
It seems hardly reasonable at first glance to suppose that an entirely new literature might one day-now, for instance-be possible. The many attempts made these last thirty years to drag fiction out of its ruts have resulted, at best, in no more than isolated works. And-we are often told-none of these works, whatever its interest, has gained the adherence of a public comparablE! to that of the bourgeois novel. The only conception of the novel to have currency today is, in fact, that of Balzac.
