The Poetics of Novels deals with the fundamentals of novel-writing, and though it engages specific notions of literary and cultural theory, it privileges the architectonics of the texts themselves as it crosses boundaries of both time and culture. The novels studied include: Austen's Northanger Abbey, Beckett's Company, Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Hamsun's Hunger, Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Lispector's Hour of the Star, and Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.