Early History of the Novel
The Romance
vs.
The Novel
Earlier Prose Narratives:
The Romance
1. a medieval tale dealing with heroes of chivalry,
of the kind common in the romance languages:
the Arthurian romances
2. the literary genre of such works
3. A work of fiction dealing with
events remote from real life
Realism in the Renaissance
Elizabethan Tragedy: “the idea of destiny…is more broadly
conceived and more closely linked to the individual character
than in antique tragedy”
Shakespeare (1564-1616): “treats noblemen, princes and
kings, statesmen, commanders and antique heroes
tragically…This separation of styles in accordance with class
appears more consistently in him than in medieval works of
art and literature”
“Spanish realism is decidedly more popular, more filled with
the life of the people than English realism of the same
period.”
-Auerbach, Mimesis
Cervantes and Don Quijote (1605)
“Almost everything before [Cervantes] appears limited,
conventional, or propagandistic in comparison…we have to
consider the older tradition of the romance of adventure and
its renewal through Boiardo and Ariosto, but no one before
him had infused the element of genuine everyday reality into
that brilliant and purposeless play of combinations.”
Assertion of the novel against the romance: “Don Quijote
read too many romances of chivalry and they deranged his
mind.”
-Auerbach, Mimesis
Readers
• Middle Ages: reading as an activity of an elite
• Invention of the printing press (Germany, 1436)
leads to increase in availability of pamphlets, books,
signs, etc.
• Number of people who can read increase
Readers
• Glorious Revolution (1688): Catholic king James I
overthrown. Protestants William and Mary replace
him. Establishment of a bill of rights and parliament.
Beginning of a parliamentary democracy.
• 18th Century: The rise of cheap newspapers with
serialized novels in them brings more readers
who are not part of an elite group.
The Novel in 18th C. England
• “a break with old fashioned romances”
• “realism as the defining characteristic which
differentiates the work of eighteenth century
novelists from previous fiction”
- Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel
The Novel in 18th C. England
“the historical importance of Defoe and
Richardson…depends on the suddenness and
completeness with which they brought into
being what may be regarded as the lowest
common denominator of the novel genre as a
whole, its formal realism.”
- Ian Watt
Realism and the Novel in 18th C.
England
• “the realism of the novels of Defoe, Richardson
and Fielding is closely associated with the fact that
Moll Flanders is a thief, Pamela a hypocrite, and
Tom Jones a fornicator”
• “[The novel] attempts to portray all the varieties of
human experience, and not merely those suited to
one particular literary perspective: the novel’s
realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents
but in the way it presents it.
Realism and the Novel in 18th C.
England
• “The novel’s serious concern with the daily lives of ordinary
people seems to depend on two important general conditions:
that society must value every individual highly enough to
consider him the proper subject of serious literature; and there
must be enough variety of belief and action among ordinary
people for a detailed account of them to be of interest.”
- Ian Watt
Realism and the Novel in 18th C.
England
• “modern society is uniquely individualist in these
respects…[because of] the rise of modern industrial
capitalism and the spread of Protestantism, especially in its
Calvinist or Puritan forms.”
- Ian Watt
Realism and the Novel:
An Opposing View
• “Romance and Novel are one.”
- Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, 1996.
Realism and the Novel :
An Opposing View
• “Romance and Novel are one.”
• “A work is a novel if it is fictional, if it is in prose ,
and if it is of a certain length.”
- Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, 1996.
Realism and the Novel :
An Opposing View
• “Romance and Novel are one.”
• “A work is a novel if it is fictional, if it is in prose ,
and if it is of a certain length.”
• “The Anglo-Saxon tradition has exhibited constant
anxiety that fiction should adhere to the criteria
posed by ‘realism’.”
- Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, 1996.
Realism and the Novel :
An Opposing View
• “Romance and Novel are one.”
• “A work is a novel if it is fictional, if it is in prose ,
and if it is of a certain length.”
- Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, 1996.
Realism and the Novel :
An Opposing View
• “Romance and Novel are one.”
• The French word for novel is “roman,” in German
is “der Roman,” and in Italian is “il romanzo.”
- Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, 1996.
Realism and the Novel :
An Opposing View
• “Romance and Novel are one.”
• The French word for novel is “roman,” in German
is “der Roman,” and in Italian is “il romanzo.”
• “The Novel as a form of literature in the West has a
history of about two thousand years.”
- Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, 1996.
Realism and the Novel :
An Opposing View
• The French word for novel is “roman,” in German is “der
Roman,” and in Italian is “il romanzo.”
• “The Novel as a form of literature in the West has a history of
about two thousand years…[It]was produced in antiquity
by…writers who came from the Near East and Africa…It is the
product of contact between Southern Europe, Western Asia, and
Northern Africa…We can assume the possibility of story and style
filtering in from the Balkans and the Celtic lands in the West, from
Persia and India in the East, frrom the Sudan and Kush and
Katanga in the South.
- Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, 1996.
The Novel in 18th C. England:
Daniel Defoe
“Defoe…expressed the diverse elements of individualism
more completely than any previous writer.”
- Ian Watt
The Novel in 18th C. England:
Daniel Defoe
“Defoe…expressed the diverse elements of individualism
more completely than any previous writer.”
Defoe was raised as a Puritan.
Puritanism: tendency towards the democratisation of the
moral and social scale.”
- Ian Watt
The Novel in 18th C. England
and Daniel Defoe
“Defoe…expressed the diverse elements of individualism
more completely than any previous writer.”
Defoe was raised as a Puritan.
Puritanism: “tendency towards the democratisation of the
moral and social scale.”
The Protestant Work Ethic and increasing secularization
- Ian Watt
Defoe and Economic
Individualism
“Defoe…expressed the diverse elements of individualism
more completely than any previous writer.”
• “All Defoe’s heroes pursue money.”
• They have no important family ties and act as individuals
for their own benefit.
- Ian Watt
Defoe and Economic
Individualism
“Defoe…expressed the diverse elements of individualism
more completely than any previous writer.”
“All Defoe’s heroes pursue money.”
• They have no important family ties and act as individuals
for their own benefit.
• Romance is secondary. Relationships are based primarily on
economics, rather than love or other sentiments.”
- Ian Watt