This Space: What Ever
Happened to Modernism? is a
book about modern fiction. "[It]
is no coincidence" he says "that
the novel emerges at the very
moment when the world is
growing disenchanted". The
Novel dramatises the emergence
of the self not under God, yet
who nevertheless seeks
enchantment however secularly
it is defined. The book's earliest
example is Rabelais' Gargantua &
Pantagruel but the most telling is
perhaps Cervantes' Don
Quixote. What Josipovici
identifies as modern here is not
only the comedic critique of the
Knight's idealism but that the
novel makes us aware that its
critique relies on "the primal
idealisation in the conception
and execution of the very work
in which the critique is made."
