Talk:Novel - Wikipedia

I archived the debate as the article has been re-written this spring. Talk:Novel/Archive 2 is interesting with its in-depth commentary of the 2009 reorganisation and re-writing of the article. Recent criticism dealt with the question whether the article should not be renamed to continue as a "history of the novel" article. I am not sure. The novel is not an automobile (though even that article begins with a history). You read and discuss novels as a production with historical roots. The old texts such as Cervantes' Don Quixote, Cleland's Fanny Hill go through ever new editions, whilst we do not rebuild Model Ts to satisfy a present demand of people who want to drive both old and new cars. School and university classes demand the historical perspective as to some extent more important than knowledge about how you analyse a novel. Jmabel who did a lot to revise the article also noted its bias: the English, French and German productions dominate the article. Wikipedia should be the ideal medium to get the broader perspective with the help of readers who can reevaluate the article with specialisations in other languages. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:39, 21 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

I see what you're saying about the lack of information about the novel outside the Big Three European markets. I notice that some of the information on the growth of the novel outside Europe is buried in the middle of other sections and hard to find. Might it be a good idea to create a separate section on the growth of the genre outside Europe -- then we could discuss the ways the novel form interacted with pre-existing cultural forms. Clearly the importation of the novel into Asian, Middle Eastern, African and Indigenous American cultures has created new concerns from traditionalists about the spread of Westernization -- maybe we could search through other articles for material to include here.... Best, Aristophanes68 (talk) 15:31, 15 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

I assume there will not be a continuous extra European tradition of "the novel" - the phenomenon might be Western (as much as it has proven to need paper and the printed book). We will find a number of titles written in other languages which we can - using our present definition (long fictional prose narrative) - put into our category. Yet these titles will (so I fear) be effectively not much more than parallel inventions which (since thy lacked paper and printing) never sparkled traditions in their languages. The situation is different for modern novels in all languages, they have joined the Western tradition since the 1850s, and should consequently be seen as branches of our Western tradition. (I might be wrong, and I see why extra European nations should insist on creating their own prestigious traditions) --Olaf Simons (talk) 17:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I would be talking more about modern novels outside Europe. But they do not simply copy European formats; instead, many non-European novelists have tried to adapt the novel into their own traditions. So it would be interesting to see how the Japanese novel tradition incorporates traditional Japanese aesthetic forms--just as many Native American novelists incorporate elements of their cultures' oral literatures into the novel. I guess what I'm thinking of his the way novels become hybridized outside of Europe. I don't think the "branch" metaphor is the best, because it makes non-Western novels subordinate to the West, instead of allowing them to become their own traditions in their own cultures. Aristophanes68 (talk) 19:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yet the production of a tradition is in itself less of a tradition than an answer to a present demand. All modern nations must have literary traditions - these must have the three essential genres of plays, poems and novels (of which novels are most difficult to get, since they depend to such a large extent on media supporting the propagation of such prose...) I'd love to see sub-chapters on the international constitution of these traditions in the last two centuries. They show the brilliance of the exchange spreading here - an exchange such fictions allow in the modern societies. (I wonder to what extent the modern nation as an institutions need the novel and its discussion). --Olaf Simons (talk) 19:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

A question: The present bibliography is problematic: It does not contain all the articles and books mentioned in the footnotes (and that is good, as they have been quite specific at times to make the exact points). It is secondly not very structured and hence of little help. I would actually like to create a bibliography that somehow follows the chapters of the present article - a bibliography designed to help students dealing with the history of fiction both with general and specific works. Is there an opinion about whether Wikipedia could have a separate page of research dealing with something like the novel - a page that could become relatively large in order to assist those who actually do research on the novel? --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hi Aristophanes68. I read the chapter you added - and am not quite sure whether it will lead to anything. Part of what you said has been said in the article's first chapter Antecedents around the world, the other half is the topic of the 20th century chapter I explicitly connected with the issue of globalisation The novel and the global market of texts: 20th- and 21st-century developments. I feel it would make more sense to add additional knowledge under these headings - so far the new chapter does not go far beyond repeating things. --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:36, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if some of that information is buried in the earlier sections. Would it be useful to bring that information down to create a fuller section on how the novel is adapted outside Europe? Just a thought. It seems like an important enough issue that it should be given its own space--especially with the concerns stated earlier that the article is too European as it is.... Aristophanes68 (talk) 03:34, 20 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Depends on your perspective - if you are interested in national literatures and in literature as a mirror of continents and cultures you will prefer a structure of regions. If you see it as a historical construction (which is the more recent) you will connect the globalisation with the 20th century (which I did). The bad structure is the so and so structure with repetitions and additions. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Why does Novelist redirect here?

Not the slightest idea. What would one do with an article on the subject. --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Klkopish added a number of sections, which might receive some more considerations before they get integrated: The major problem is that they continue to speak of the advend of the novel around 1700 - which contradicts the entire article. If anything we mightspeak of a new debate about "novels" and "romances" rising in the 1670s after we had something similar in Chaucer's days. There is no Before Novels in the sense Ian Watt implied or in the sense Paul J. Hunter supported with his book under the title. It only works if one says: These "novels" published before Defoe were no "novels" and if one effectivly avoids them (by focussing on the novel after Defoe). The paragraphs offered remarks on the newness of sequels in the 18th century - said without much knowledge about medieval and early modern fiction and culminated in a number of judgements about the creativity of male and female authors compared, which I read as strongly gender biasd. See for the detaild discussion User talk:Klkopish#Sequels of 18th-Century Novels --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'd like to call attention to the fact that this article seems to contradict itself repeatedly. Although it does make brief mention of such ancient romances as Daphnis and Chloe, the Saytircon, the Golden Ass, various works by Lucian like the True Story, etc., it seems oddly at that point to dismiss these narratives as being "satires" or other such nonsense,

The problem is simply that these classical texts do not fall into one category before the 19th century. Daphins and Chloe and Heliodor's romances are (I am speaking about the period until the 19th century) identified as romances and seen as part of the tradtionion leading to Defoe and Richardson. Satyricon and Golden Ass are seen as Satires. We might disagree using our own set of definitions as given at the beginning. But if I define traditions, that's a different story, and I was trying to write the story of traditions and developments. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Honestly I don't find this response very clear but maybe that's my fault. In any case, the point is that at at several points in the article, whatever you intentions may have been, the novel is defined in broad terms that clearly include these classical texts. For example at the very beginning "a novel is a long narrative in literary prose" (!). I'm sorry, am I missing something here? This clearly includes all of the classical texts I mentioned. Admittedly the Satyricon for example contains perhaps "non-literary" prose excluding it from the definition for that reason would be bizarre, considering for example that Bakhtin defines the novel exactly on the basis of the multiplicity of voices it offers. (151.50.13.245 (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

What are you aiming at? I included Lucian, Heliodorus and all these people - following the very definition given in the initial paragraphs.

They're listed but you present them explicitly as non-novels. In fact they're in the same paragraph where you talk about Homeric epic, which are some of the few major extended narratives that everyone seems to agree is NOT a novel. (151.50.20.61 (talk) 23:58, 9 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

whereas elsewhere in the article a novel is defined broadly as a 1. "prose narration" that is 2. distinctly "fictional" as opposed to history - criteria that these ancient novels very clearly fulfill. I realize that this is no doubt do to wider academic confusion over the meaning of the word "novel," but it remains no more acceptable for this reason. Likewise at a separate part Lukacs is cited to distinguish the "novel" from the classical epic (easily found by searching for the hideous epithet "Homerian" in place of "Homeric") on the basis of the fact that epic is supposed to present some sort of unified view and the novel a personal fractured one; here, again, the ancient novel is inexplicably ignored. At yet another point the claim is made that the first romances appeared in southern France, verse romances by Chaucer appearing "much later;" I find this statement extremely puzzling because, sorting from least to most importance: 1. Chaucer did not only write in verse; 2. the term "romance" itself seems hardly less well defined than the term "novel"; 3. even following this argument, the romances of southern France have clear ties to earlier Latin and Greek romances in particular, notable the Alexander Romance which, in many varied guises doubtless, is directly traceable back to antiquity; and 4. when I looked up the citation for this odd statement, I found that it dated from the 17th century (!), which is obviously problematic for many reasons.

? Chaucer did not only write verse? I know that his philosophical texts are prose, yet both his novellistic tales and his romances (if the romance of the rose translation is his) are written in verse. And the romance-tradition? Do you agree or do you disagree with the notion that the medieval romance is rooted in these texts as mentioned? I feel you agree yet want to disagree. The medieval and early modern "novela" can be defined against the medieval and early modern "romance". At least this is part of the traditions I have been taught in and continued to teach with the background of my own knowledge. If you disagree - well, quote new articles that say there was no difference between them in 1400 oder 1670. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

No, in fact the Tale of Melibee, and the Parson's Tale are both written in prose, maybe not perhaps the most interesting of the Canterbury tales, but the first at least should certainly count as a romance. And for that matter, what about Boccaccio, who wrote the whole Decameron in prose, which was so much admired by Chaucer and in fact directly imitated and translated by the later repeatedly?? Certainly sort of proto-modern novels like the picaresques and Cervantes must owe rather more to Boccaccio than Chaucer. And speaking of Boccaccio, although his sources remain a bit hazy, many of his stories are clearly tied to narrative traditions rooted in Persia, Spain, India - well outside the scope of the medieval French romance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron#Literary_sources_and_influence_of_the_Decameron), not to mention the classical influences which were my original point of contention. In any case, leaving behind Boccaccio for now, I find the statement not only problematic but unhelpful which is why I picked it out for criticism. One might say something in regard to the fact that the European vernacular tradition of the medieval romance has strong roots in southern France, but even there there are problems of relevancy and definition. I don't even know what you mean to say at the end of your response, but it seems clear enough to me that 1. we shouldn't be quoting "scholarship" from the 1670; and 2. unless we adapt this article to the stricter definition of "the novel as understood in the 19th century" which I hope seems ridiculous enough to both of us, the only possible logical organization of this is adopting your broader definition of the novel as an extended fictional composition in literary prose and proceeding from there on a chronological basis, because otherwise this is a big mess.(151.50.13.245 (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

I taught Chaucer - Melibee included. All I said was that the novella (as presented by Boccacio in prose, could also be given in verse (so does Chaucer) - in order to prove that the verse/prose distintion most people will claim to be intrinsic, is not.

Well then you ought to have known that Chaucer did not only write in verse. What you said originally was NOT that a novella could also be in verse, it was something very muddled about the origins of the medieval romance being traced from southern France to Chaucer, but I see that you've revised that section to make a different and probably more logical point which I commend you for. However, the references there to Byron and Pushkin, which I appreciate, are bizarrely out of place. Why not rather more simply add a paragraph to the "Romanticism, 1770-1850" section in which you state (since apparently romanticism is already "pushing art to its limits in any case") that in the Romantic period there even arose a fashion of appropriating novelistic conventions into verse forms, producing such works as Byron's Don Juan and Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin which imitated Byron's formal aspects. I would prefer the form Evgeny Onegin to that transliterated from Russian as I expect it would be far more familiar and recognizable to English-speaking audiences, who otherwise might not understand the reference. Parenthetically, if you're going to talk about the Renaissance novella you ought to make mention mention of Marguerite de Navarre. Not nearly enough is made either of Cervantes - for many novelists the very epitome and originator of what they considered novelistic form - or of Rabelais, who is only mentioned in a rather quaint comparison to the incomparably more obscure (and less novelistic) writer Heinrich Wittenwiler; whereas also Rabelais is an essential cornerstone for the novelistic tradition according to many writers and critics (Bakhtin, Sterne etc.) (151.50.20.61 (talk) 23:58, 9 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

Clearly the only logical way to present this article is beginning chronologically with ancient prose narratives, then medieval ones, then modern and so on, making reference to the fact at the beginning perhaps that in the 18th and 19th century European tradition, the word "novel" was primarily understood more strictly to refer to the extremely personal and domestic tradition of prose narrative originating in, perhaps, late 17th century France; but that certainly by the time that the modernist novel had exceeded the bounds of this form in the 20th century, this older definition was in need of an expansion, without which such common terms as the "ancient novel" would make little sense. Without such restructuring I'm afraid this article is very much a jumble. For example, while I wholly appreciate the references to non-European pre-modern prose fiction - and while the cautionary explanation is undoubtedly useful, that is that much of this fiction was, however, unlikely to influence the modern European novel as it became a dominant form in the 18th century - as it is, it makes very little sense that this literature should be discussed before the classical texts I've mentioned above, since these are 1. part of the European tradition which undeniably dominates this article; 2. in terms of influence on the stricter definition of novel far more relevant - certainly Lucian at least was being read in 18th century Europe (!); and most importantly 3. these classical novels are far earlier than the non-European texts in any case (!!), so why in the world should they be mentioned only later?

If you sart with ancient Europe, cross then to Asia around 1000 and then back to Europe 1100 - well yes, you can do this for the sake of chronology, yet the Tale of Genji did not become part of the world-wide tradition of fiction before the 19th century. The Arabian Nights entered the tradition of the novel/romance in 1704 - I tried to define the set of traditions behind the modern term novel (reacting on this article in 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Novel&oldid=15802717 - this was the Anglo-Saxon Option: A list of others and then the new brave new beginning with Defoe and the "modern Novel" - without any further consideration of the fact that Robinson Crusoe was actually read as the most spectacular romance in 1719 within a production that claimed to have stepped beyond romances - celebrating the modern "novel" (as rooted in Boccacio and Chaucer) as the great alternative. This was my feeling: If I start an alternative aricle, I'll adress the 1680s novel and the 1680s claim to have defeated the romance, before I come to Defoe and the story about how his new "romance" became the "first really modern novel". And I will go back far beyond that - as you see I did this and I feel many will say, I spoke too much of these pre-1719 pieces and all their traditions. Maybe I failed.

This article should be concerned with those works we define as novels today, not those works that were considered as novels when they were published. Of course this approach has to be explained, maybe explaining in the intro that, as you said, Robinson Crusoe wouldn't have been called a "novel" when it was published but later became a protype of the novel as seen later. Sorry this is awfully confusing to talk about I'm now realizing but I do think my criticisms are valid. (151.50.13.245 (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

"This article should be concerned with those works we define as novels today" now that is tricky - who is "us today?" If we today discuss Boccaccio as a predecessor of the 17th century novel, then I will have to cope with this fact. The article was written to be of help to (my) students who read Wikipedia. I can either do what most of my colleagues would do: say that Wikipedia is bullshit for pupils, and that it offers things as to be learned at high-school or I accept the fact that students get their ideas from this medium, and that it is hence part of my own problem if they read Ian Watt and nothing newer than that in Wikipedia.

Oh please, if you want to know what "we today" consider to be a novel, here's a suggestion: all you have to do is look up the wikipedia page on that particular work and it will tell you. That approach even has the advantage of contributing to the internal consistency with the rest of wikipedia which otherwise is rather noticeably lacking in this article. For example, on their respective wikipedia pages, the works of Rabelais, Cervantes, and Lucian are all described as, guess what, "novels" - which makes very little sense in the context of your article. I suppose everyone else is wrong though and you'll have to go through all of the hundreds of pages for literary works your article excludes from being considered considered novels by some arbitrary definition you've nowhere been able to define in order that your students, whoever they are, don't get confused. I didn't mean that as a serious suggestion so please do not pursue it. Oh also, and strangely considering your adherence to the old-fashioned the-English-invented-the-novel-in-the-18th-century-by-improving-on-the-French narrative, the magnificent Madame de La Fayette gets rather short shrift here; as does the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, here considered a "satirical romance," that is, to the rest of the world, a "picaresque novel." Thomas Nashe is another picaresque novelist oddly missing. (Oh wait but I forgot we're not supposed to use the word "novel" before Robinson Crusoe. I guess you'll have to "cope" with yet another fact.) (151.50.20.61 (talk))

Well, I suppose the discovery that the term "novel" may not be always particularly useful isn't exactly a new one; but again, if we explain at the beginning that the word can refer either to prose fiction in general or the "novel" as defined in the 18th century in particular, and then proceed to sort all these works on the basis of chronology, I do believe that this article would be greatly improved. Parenthetically, it might also make sense to make brief reference to earlier epic narrative as a predecessor to the classical novel, explaining however that the epic tradition is usually treated separately from that of prose fiction. I very much hope that someone actually takes the effort to read these suggestions and implement the changes required and which, I'm afraid, I have neither the time nor the presumption to take care of myself. Lastly, and somewhat complicating things, there is an important tradition "novels in verse" such as Evgeny Onegin and Don Juan - both works of the highest significance to literary history - which, without compromising my earlier statements, is entirely ignored by this article and probably should not be. I apologize for the inexcusable inelegance of these remarks but must be going. (151.50.13.245 (talk) 23:01, 3 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

...indeed there is a 19th century move towards a new (national) epic rivalling with modern prose fiction as written at that time. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes but these works are also explicitly known as novels-in-verse and not simply as epics. There are 19th century epics such as Blake and Melville, but Pushkin and Byron are closer to "novels" in the older sense of the genre despite their verse form. Sorry again this seems to contradict the general definition I'm advocating, but within the chronological framework there should still be plenty of room to describe "the rise of the European novel" or something in roughly the 18th century (notably with the rise of mass print and readership!) and so on, and discuss how the novel came to a dominating position in European literature within a certain generic framework. I realize this is a bit complicated but there are a lot of good things here and an organizational overhaul might pull this from the c-class article category to one that's actually very useful. (151.50.13.245 (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

I don't mind the additional note - it proves what I said right in the beginning that prose is not essential. --Olaf Simons (talk) 14:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry I really have very little desire to talk about this any more right now, but that's not at all what you said from the beginning, seeing as the very beginning of the article is that a novel is "a long narrative in literary prose." I actually think that's as good a definition as I've heard, provided that it's clarified that it's a fictional narrative, or at least, that it presents itself as such. But no, you did not say "right from the beginning that prose is not essential," and personally I'm somewhat perturbed by that statement. So Evgeny Onegin you're willing to accept as a novel but not Don Quijote? Bizarre, frankly. Look, as much as people like to complicate these discussions, it's not really that difficult. Wikipedia has a helpful little chart under literature where it lists the "major forms": Novel, Poem, Drama, Short story, Novella. Thus, the novel is those works of literary fiction which are not poetry or drama and are longer than both the short story and the novella. I say literary fiction to underline that a novel's primary purpose is entertainment; that is, that it is not a work of history or philosophy (although of course there may be historical or philosophical novels, in which, however, those purposes are subordinated to the primary one of entertainment). This is how publishers understand the term, this is how the public understands the term, this is how academics understand the term when they talk about such phenomena as the ancient or Byzantine novel, the picaresque novel, the non-Western novel, and so on, all major categories of fiction by any standard that are systematically excluded from "noveldom" by your stubborn adherence to some sort of Victorian narrative that you must have been taught in school somewhere. It has nothing to do with the decline of culture and if you lament this definition you are a hypocrite and a pedant and have probably failed to realize that as it is this a C-class article, rather muddled up until 19th century (after which I have gladly left off reading although I hope and imagine that it rather improves), and that as it is it contradicts many many other wikipedia articles which consider their subjects to be novels; and leaves extremely important works of literature stranded as seemingly belonging to none of the aforesaid wikipedia categories. Oh one last thought. Your whole distinction between romance and novel, although traditional, is wrongheaded. If you actually read medieval romances many of those works present themselves as epics in the classical tradition. How in the world, when speaking of genre not subject, does the Song of Roland have more to do with Lazarillo de Tormes (both "romances" here) than Lazarillo de Tormes has do with Tom Jones (a "novel")? And in any case these distinctions are based on extremely limited sociohistorical contexts, whereas wikipedia aims to be universal. The distinction between poetry and prose fiction is, if not universal, then very close to being so. All of which concludes my last plea that you abandon 19th century conventions and accept the very same definition of novel that you yourself have proposed as an extended fictional narrative in prose, and work from there. Very last thing sorry, looking over other language versions of this page, the Spanish starts of quite similar for example but makes no forced attempt to distinguish between non-novels and pre-novels, discussing Lazarillo, Rabelais, Madame de Lafayette, Cervantes, etc., all together in chronological order. The French takes a characteristically more structural approach, distinguishing the epic as essentially an oral form and the novel/romance as an essentially written/readerly form. Italian is similar to the Spanish with international texts such as Lady Murasaki mentioned under a strictly chronological hierarchy. The German I have no time to look at in detail but it too seems more strictly chronological. All of these approaches are preferable in my personal opinion. Thank you for your patience. (151.50.20.61 (talk) 23:58, 9 April 2010 (UTC))Reply

I added both authors and clarified the Chaucer/verse statement. My language (true also for the "Homerian" in place of "Homeric" question) must always be checked by native speakers. --Olaf Simons (talk) 14:56, 5 April 2010 (UTC)Reply