(literature) A novel that deliberately avoids the typical conventions of the novel, such as a coherent plot and protagonist.
(literature, by extension) Any form of writing style that deviates from the norm of technical conventions used in writing literature.
Examples
But Rowson's Tristram Shandy is an antinovel not about WRITING but about READING Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
The antinovel usually fragments and distorts the experience of its characters, forcing the reader to construct the reality of the story from a disordered narrative.
But Kundera rejects the kind of history that breaks with the past, criticizing the surrealists' denigration of the novel and the later glorification of the antinovel.
The nouveau roman or new novel, sometimes called the antinovel, dispensed with previous notions of plot, character, style, theme, psychology, chronology, and message.
The structuralist vogue also affected the novelists who, beginning in the mid-1950s, leunouveaue nouveau roman, the antinovel.
A good example of the consistent antinovel is Joyce's Ulysses.
