The Maximalist Novel

The literary object that the essay seeks to define bears the name of "maximalist novel." An aesthetically hybrid genre of the contemporary novel, it first appeared in the United States during the last quarter of the twentieth century and then “emigrated” to Europe on the cusp of the twenty-first. It is called “maximalist” due to the multiform maximizing and hypertrophic tension of its narrative. The aim of the article is to stake out a new conceptual territory that contributes to a re-shaping of both the traditional view of the literary postmodern and the understanding of the development of the novel in the second half of the twentieth century.