Lukács’s world-oriented novel is founded on a subjective optical illusion

Evidence

Given the opposition between matter and spirit on which Lukács’ theory rests, it is clear that novels will tend to fall into two general groups, depending on which term is accented. Yet in another sense the simplicity of this typology is deceptive, for the starting point of the novel must always be subjective, must always be human experience: the objective term, the outside world, scarcely bothers to dream of its reconciliation with man. So the world-oriented novel (which Lukács calls the novel of abstract idealism) proves to be based on a kind of optical illusion. Its hero is characterized by a blind and unshakable conviction in the world’s meaning, by an unjustified and obsessive faith in the success of his quest in the here and now, in the very possibility of reconciliation. For such an obsessed hero (whose prototype is of course Don Quixote), the apparent resistance of the real world can be easily accounted for by magic and the hostile operations of evil sorcerers: thus he never really comes into contact with outside reality, but only with that Utopian vision of it which was his starting point. The paradoxical effect of such an attitude upon the form is that the novel of abstract idealism will result in a series of objective events and adventures, will offer a seemingly objective surface, even though this surface objectivity is nothing but the result of madness and subjective obsession. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 360

Categorization

• XREF: Reflection theory structure here echoes Lukács’s own History and Class Consciousness categories; connects back to the reader’s totalization/reification thread. — connects to: Lukács’s Theory of the Novel harbors a form-content contradiction that undermines its conclusions — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 368; Imagination actively creates worlds rather than merely imitating an external reality — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 238

Broader Connections

• Imagination actively creates worlds rather than merely imitating an external reality #expands (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 238