Abstract: Leslie Kaplan’s novels at first seem to run counter to novelistic conventions: barely sketched characters, a subtle plot, minimalist prose. The Shakespearean intertext that pervades them, by way of explicit quotations or the use of recognizable motifs, functions as the driver of a mediatized novel, mobilizing a universal ontological investigation reevaluated in light of contemporary questions. Under Shakespeare’s lantern, the novelistic embraces a renewal of realist practices.
