Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction to the Fifteenth Anniversary Edition Introduction: Dialectical Method in Literary History PART I QUESTIONS OF TRUTH Chapter One: The Destabilization of Generic Categories Chapter Two: The Evidence of the Senses: Secularization and Epistemological Crisis Chapter Three: Histories of the Individual PART II QUESTIONS OF VIRTUE Chapter Four: The Destabilization of Social Categories Chapter Five: Absolutism and Capitalist Ideology: The Volatility of Reform Chapter Six: Stories of Virtue PART III THE DIALECTICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE NOVEL Chapter Seven: Romance Transformations (I) : Cervantes and the Disenchantment of the World Chapter Eight: Romance Transformations (II) : Bunyan and Literalization of Allegory Chapter Nine: Parables of the Younger Son (I) : Defoe and the Naturalization of Desire Chapter Ten: Parables of the Younger Son (II) : Swift and the Containment of Desire Chapter Eleven: The Institutionalization of Conflict (I) : Richardson and the Domestication of Service Chapter Twelve: The Institutionalization of Conflict (II) : Fielding and the Instrumentality of Belief Conclusion Notes.