List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii Preface xv Chapter One: The Novel as Dutch Painting 1 Chapter Two: Low Genre and High Theory 24 Chapter Three: Balzac's Bourgeois Interiors and the Quest for the Absolute 58 Chapter Four: George Eliot's Defense of Dutch Painting 91 Chapter Five: Hardy's Rural Painting of the Dutch School 125 Chapter Six: Proust's Genre Painting and the Rediscovery of Vermeer 162 Notes 195 Index 243