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Post by Gerard on Feb 4, 2013 8:24:01 GMT -5
The French took the art of the novel seriously. They cultivated a technical language in regard to it - le mot juste, progression d'effet, etc. - and these were terms that Ford Madox Ford himself made it his duty to use. He was thus outraged by E. M. Forster's Clark Lectures, Aspects of the Novel, which absolutely refused to take "the art of the novel" seriously. Forster had written about André Gide, "He is a little more solemn than an author should be about the whole caboodle." "And there you have the attitude of the British don-critic towards our art," raged Ford. Instead of telling the world how he had written A Passage to India, Forster had provided "tea-cup clattering disquisitions upon the Sir Willoughby Patterne of George Meredith."
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2013 9:19:59 GMT -5
Out of interest, whom do you consider to have invented the novel, Gerard? Do you have any particular favourites? I suspect that I would ultimately go for Dostoyevsky: ' The Brothers Karamazov'.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brothers_Karamazov |
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Post by neilmcgowan on Feb 6, 2013 8:37:43 GMT -5
Out of interest, whom do you consider to have invented the novel, Gerard? I believe that Samuel Richardson and Tobias Smollett staked their respective claims in the genre somewhat earlier  |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2013 10:16:06 GMT -5
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Post by neilmcgowan on Feb 6, 2013 11:47:57 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2013 15:23:08 GMT -5
According to Wikipedia, a novel is a long prose narrative that describes fictional characters and events in the form of a sequential story, usually. The genre has historical roots in the fields of medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the relation to reality, the characterization, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced to literary prose in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. Western traditions of the modern novel reach back into the field of verse epics, though again not in an unbroken tradition. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (1300–1000 BC), Indian epics such as the Ramayana (400 BCE and 200 CE) and Mahabharata (4th century BC) were as unknown in early modern Europe as the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf (c. 750–1000 rediscovered in the late 18th century and early 19th century). Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (9th or 8th century BC), Virgil's Aeneid (29–19 BC) were read by Western scholars since the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the 18th century, modern French prose translations brought Homer to a wider public, who accepted them as forerunners of the modern novel. Ancient prose narratives included a didactic strand with Plato's dialogs, a satirical with Petronius' Satyricon, the incredible stories of Lucian of Samosata, and Lucius Apuleius' proto-picaresque The Golden Ass, Neil, and a heroic production with the romances of Heliodorus and Longus. It is less easy to define the traditions of short fictions that led to the medieval novella. Jokes would fall into the broad history of the "exemplary story" that gave rise to the more complex forms of novelistic story telling. The Bible is filled with similes and stories to be interpreted. Fiction is, as Pierre Daniel Huet noted in his Traitté de l'origine des romans in 1670, a rather universal phenomenon, and at the same moment one that lacks a single cause. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NovelTo be honest, I do not read many novels these days, Gerard. Here is a top ten: [/b] www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/oct/12/features.fictionAny other recommendations? |
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