In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Nicholas Dames about the history of the chapter. They discuss how chapters have boundaries, define what is a chapter, and talk about literacy form. They also talk about the chapter as temporal units or scenes, Tabula Bembina and the first chapter, capitulation and Augustine, and how the chapter evolved with the history of the Bible. They also discuss the chapter in the 15th century, Locke’s anti-chapter theory, Jane Austen and the significance of chapter word count, Tolstoy and episodes, and Dickens and Eliot with diurnal time. They also discuss Machado’s inbetweenness, the Antique-Diminutive Model, chapter in film, the future of the chapter, and many more topics.

Nicholas Dames is the Theodore Kahan Professor of Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has been a recipient of Columbia’s Presidential Teaching Award (2005), a Charles Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (2005-6), the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award (2008), and the Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching (2013). In 2009-2010 he was chair of the MLA’s Division on Prose Fiction Executive Committee.  From 2011-2014 he was chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature. His main interests are in the history and theory of the novel, the hsitory of reading, and 19th century fiction. He is the author of the most recent book, The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century.

Website: https://nicholasdames.org/

Twitter: @n_j_dames

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