George Meredith and Knowledge

Abstract In this chapter, we apply the sorites paradox to the difficulty of establishing generic distinctions. Our test case is George Meredith’s 1862 Modern Love, a verse-novel so far on the poetic side of the generic boundary between “verse” and “novel” as to make us imagine distinctions might be sharp. That is not so. As with the other verse-novels we examine, Modern Love highlights issues of form and legibility, and, like them, its prickly self-awareness promotes critical distance. Modern Love is engaged in the project of calculating distance and in exploring the shifts and costs of operating in a realm without stable boundaries. Meredith’s verse-novel ultimately illustrates how genre is not a transhistorical law but an ephemeral, performative act specific to the time of writing and reading.