2007-08 BM1: Session 5

Back to 2007-08 BM1 Introduction to the Critical and Scholarly Discussion of Literature, Part 1

Argument 5: The "Rise of the Novel" has been twice re-written over the past 100 years

• The rise of the novel was originally - from the 16th into the 18th century - understood as the rise of realistic shorter stories (today called "novellas") defeating the rivaling romances

• Novels - such as Cervantes' Novelas exemplares (1613) - were supposed to

• teach through good and bad examples of what men and women did in peculiar ("novel", i.e. new) situations
• entertain with their rapidly evolving plots of intrigues (i.e. secret plans),
• be written in plain and modern language,
• end in a point - a surprising turn of the events which the story teller could be expected to use for a more or less serious moral conclusion

• Romances - such as the Amadis which had driven Cervantes' Don Quixote into a comical heroism - were supposed to

• be long epic works
• delight with a language full of lofty expressions,
• be constructed as in successions of adventures,
• celebrate the deeds of great heroes,
• inspire an emulation of the hero's spirit.

• The "rise of the novel" as defined in 1957 by Ian Watt in his book of the same title

• turned French fictional works of the 17th century into original production of "romances",
• claimed the new romances written by Defoe and his followers to be the first real "modern novels".

• Research of the last two decades has detected a production of "novels" written before Defoe. Authors from Aphra Behn to Eliza Haywood have become "mothers of the English novel" in this development.