Gigantic Fictions

Terms such as ‘epic,’ ‘mammoth,’ ‘gigantic,’ and even ‘loose, baggy monsters’ have been coined to describe examples of literary discourse that inordinately exceed the normative boundaries of fiction. How are we to understand these narratives? What is the relation between literary gigantism and mimesis? How do 'gigantic fictions' threaten to break their literary bounds? What holds these mammoth narratives together? What impels authors to elect such a grand scope for literary representation? We explore these questions and others through close reading of several works deemed to be among the most gargantuan from authors such as Rabelais, Murasaki Shikibu, Tolstoy and Joyce.