THE SINGAPORE NOVEL : A CRITICAL APPROACH

Abstract

This Academic Exercise endeavours to establish a clearly defined critical apparatus in order to determine the literary status of the Singapore novel. While the apparatus may not be definitive, given the critical controversies surrounding the novel as a genre, it is a useful conservative basis on which the evaluation of the Singapore novel can be pursued. Chapter one surveys previous efforts at assessing the Singapore novel. It also establishes the corpus of Singapore novels written in English, and attempts to justify the choice of the four novels which this study evaluates. Part one of chapter two provides an explicit working definition of the novel as a genre, and aims to contextualize the Singapore novel into this definition. Part two then engages in the main focus of the study: that is, the analysis of the four selected novels through a suggested critical apparatus to ascertain their generic quality. Chapter three then ventures to make tentative speculations on the future direction and development of the Singapore novel by examining the societal factors in the local context which influence the genre, as well as reviewing recent developments in the local novelistic scene.