Talk:Novel

Separate Bibliography?

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)

Novel#The novel outside the West

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)

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)

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)

Novelist

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)

Sequels of 18th-Century Novels

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)

A classical perspective and general observations

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)

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))

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))

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)

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))

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))

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))

"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))

...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)

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))

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)

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))

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)

an error in the page: "The second major development is fixed to a single title: The Portuguese Amadis de Gaula became the first best-seller of modern fiction"

When talking about Amadis de Gaula as the first best-seller it's not correct to state that the book is portuguese. Even if the origins of the narration are not clear, in the wikipedia entrance to this novel it's considered an older version from Joao de Lobeira, who himself based is lost work on an even older castillian narration. Anyway wether the origin is portuguese or castillian, the book which was a best-seller was the verion from Garcia de Montalvo, and it's difficult to believe the older versions from the XVth century were written in the same style). So this text: "The second major development is fixed to a single title: The Portuguese Amadis de Gaula became the first best-seller of modern fiction" should be changed to "The second major development is fixed to a single title: The Spanish Amadis de Gaula, by García Montalvo became the first best-seller of modern fiction" --J1sp2sp (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

appreciated and changed accordingly, --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:44, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Give the history its own article.

The history section is more than large and detailed enough for its own article. It's larger and more detailed than most articles we have already. What I'm saying is that it is incredibly, overwhelming big, much more so than what could be kept in a summary article. Just add an intro paragraph and we can move it as-is. And then a massive clean-up is probably in order because it has a strong tendency to go off into polemics and academic analysis. Zazaban (talk) 02:40, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

see the point, but unlike cars, where history is just a marginal aspect (you do not drive the old things any longer, old timers do not play a role on the present auto market), this is different with novels - they are taught and perceived as a historical production. People read Lucians Ass, Robinson Crusoe, Fanny Hill, Jane Austen, Frankenstein and Madame Bovary just as Kafka and Marquez. If you want to cover that thing, it is one of historical traditions (and our ways to create them). You can of course say: That's all nonsense - Frankenstein is a Tale of Horror, that's the category, and no history please, Crusoe is adventure, full stop - but then: that is another historical attitude, 1950s literary criticism to see the work of art as such. The article was written for my students - and: yes I hoped to move them towards some thoughts of academic analysis (basically as I regret it if my students quote these Wikipedia articles that are completely written without any critical thought of options to evaluate the materials) (that was the funny part for me as a university teacher: not to complain about Wikipedia but to get my students right where they will start informing themselves and to offer them the knowledge we expected them to have in their final classes. Wikipedia is efficient. If I offer this in class I get half the attention. Offer it here and they take it from their favourite medium (without even assuming that I could have written the thing they have copied from the web)),

PS: The traffic rate has grown immensely with the article's expansion [1], probably because many things are mentioned to get Google hits. See Drama / version April 26 for a comparison, that is the usual mess of things one also might know, something you can hardly use in oder to get some ideas for an essay or as a background for an exam. --Olaf Simons (talk) 13:34, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Zazaban that this section is way too long to be easily readable. I'm not disputing for a second that the content is not important - it is - it just would be better set out in a separate article which can be clearly linked. I propose that the Etymology section should remain in this article, with everything from Antecedents... to the 20th/21st century sections moved to a new article. There would be a clear logic in this in that these sections form a time line. The following sections, from Writing Literary Theory onwards, should in my view remain within the main article. Any views on this? Tallguyuk (talk) 20:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I would have to support that move as well, does anyone want to take it on?Sadads (talk) 00:17, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that seeing it is so long, it needs to be split. I may like lots of history on the page, but most (school projects, reference etc.) are just looking for the major points I would think. Starfleet Academy "Live long and prosper." 07:44, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

You are arguing for an article like "What kids at school need to know about the novel". And: It would be fun to take a tour through Anglophone (and then world-wide) school curricula, in order to get the full load of prejudices taught: like Anglophone option: "Robinson Crusoe was the first (English) Novel" (Completely wrong - neither was Rob C. seen as a "novel", nor was it "the first novel in English", nor was it read as the first "realistic novel" (it was seen as a "romance" full of improbabilities)) - you'd have to say a lot of nonsense, if you looked at school knowledge.

The only thing I could imagine here is: to write precisely that article: an article comprising knowledge as taught at schools up to university level. I'll then give that a second chapter on the problematic validity of this "knowledge", because most of this "knowledge" is actually taught in order to be questioned in a good opening paragraph of your school essay. My favorite page of first items to be questioned is the First novel in English-page. Those who give standard knowledge have not understood that you get the extra points once you have the knowledge one needs in order to question the standard.

Why we cannot have the common school knowledge plus expected problematization? Simply because this is an encyclopedia. The article is well written if it gives the knowledge you need in order to balance a statement in your essay.

As to the split: "History as one article, and The essence of the novel as this article - I still think this is nonsense. We are speaking about a historical construct. The novel is not the novel you buy, and I define, because I cannot tell which novel you are about to buy. That could be Gilgamesh under the assumption that it is a novel in verse, that could be a modern piece of fiction. This is an area with historical and geographical dimensions and different definitions.

The ideal article has about 45 minutes additional reading time to lead you one step ahead. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:40, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Novel vs historical writing

Much of the article (what I read of it, anyway) appears to be belabouring the separation of "novels" from "historical writing". And yet, for the modern reader, at least, the salient distinction should surely be between the novel and the romance.

I guess my questions must be:

• Historically, was there a stage where novels struggled to distinguish themselves from histories?

..actually not. The word novel meant news, in several languages it stood for news papers. The process is rather that historians struggled to distance themselves from these titles - mostly by discrediting them as romances, pure invention. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

• Prose fiction has very long history, many times longer than that of novels. When and how did novels become definitively separated from romances?

The late 17th century positively had debate about the superiority of "novels" (short stories of intrigues) over long "romances" of love and heroism. The debate reaches back into Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (where we have a controversy over different types of stories) and it leads to Ian Watt's Rise of The Novel (1959). --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

203.169.48.225 (talk) 06:07, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there is an exact point they separated. In fact, in much of Europe no separation even occurred; the word "romance", or equivalent, is still used for the modern novel in many places. I understand that in English it essentially came down to marketing. Zazaban (talk) 06:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes. English speakers refer to "romance" when they think of cheap love stories. The other stuff is "novel". Continental readers think of Romane and use the label for anything long and fictional from Heliodorus to Defoe or Joyce. The differentiation is here e.g. in German between a trivial market (Trivialliteratur) and a literary production. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Which brings me to my next point: is the novel a fundamental category of (prose) literature in its own right, or is it just a modern sub-category? I mean, a literary form that only appeared in one part of the world a couple of centuries ago doesn't seem to have much claim as a universal literary form, does it? And no, I don't intend to debate the subject here. I'm just wondering what the accepted wisdom / conventional interpretation is of the positioning of the novel, and how this should be reflected in the article. I find this article far too discursive to figure out what is basic here. 203.169.48.225 (talk) 10:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, your question is complex - it has the potential to inspire a conference of literary historians. I am already happy if the article has a horizon to reach these complexities. (Indeed I agree with your proposition: the modern novel [a novel to be debated by literary critics and to be honoured as a work of creativity] is a western product, something that rose against the backdrop of a market of loves stories, secondly against the backdrop of a market of dubious histories, and thirdly against the backdrop of true histories discussed by historians) --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

english novel

what is the reason behind the rise of the novel85.195.186.70 (talk) 11:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I thought I said this:

• Firstly the rise of the novella (the short story of intrigues) in a romance vs. novel-controversy that reaches from the 1350s into the 1710s (with works such as Cervantes' Novelas Exemplares). See: "Petites histoires" or "novels", 1600-1740
• Secondly the development of a new long romance full of adventures that takes its new realism from the market of dubious histories (such as written by Gaitien Courtils des Sandras). This new romance (finally exemplified by Robinson Crusoe 1719) becomes the modern novel of realism between 1780 and 1850 when authors of the romantic era venture an entirely new production of extremely fictional (Gothic) romances. See: From dubious history to literature: The 18th-century market reform

The reasons behind these developments are complex. The most important is probably the attempt to separate fiction from history without doing what historians had done before: They had defamed fiction right into the 18th century. The new mode of separation was to praise fiction wherever it shows clear merits of art. The pro-fiction debate of literary critics eventually established a separation of fact and fiction all sides can live with. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:15, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Snoopy Issues

IMO the section on novel length not only focuses way too much on snoopy and his "novel", but also describes them both in a primarily in-universe way. For example, I think it is hardly necessary to include snoopy's entire fictional novel, as inferred from the strips. It is also not even noted that it is intended as a parody of traditional epic novels, and subjects it to entirely serious literary criticism. I think almost all mention of snoopy should removed from that section, as it has very little to do with the general topic of "novels". Sithman VIII !! 20:39, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Remove Snoopy if there is a consensus - I confess I used him as a starting point in the course I gave when writing the article. --Olaf Simons (talk) 07:56, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I just don't feel it's relevant to the comparatively massive topic of novels. Perhaps we could remove the transcript of his novel, and maybe trim down the rest? Sithman VIII !! 00:49, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

It appears the Snoopy section is lifted directly froma blog. Or perhaps the blog post is lifted from Wiki. MlleDiderot (talk) 01:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The second. This blog (see the date: March 14 2010) is most certainly more than inspired by the present article (click the image, its en.wikipedia, the text and word count are taken from the article, the topic is the one I offered: the length versus structure question. I guess I was the first who brought the extended story and the short cartoon together again; the context had been lost, when I found the cartoon back years ago. I am amused to see this happen. I included Snoopy after a course I gave at the university of Oldenburg, in which he served to make it clear that it is not the length that turns a novel into a novel. I had my students analyse the narrative structures - and assume the blogger realised the little cartoon's potential.

This is the edit that brought Snoopy into the novel article - then as a note in the article plus footnote to the image and the text as available on the web, both still separate at that time [2], February 23rd 2009. I then tried to find the original and the entire story. The story was first quoted in its entirety within the article with this edit: [3] on August 13th 2009. I added the image later that day [4] as I realised that the web sources I had given had become unstable. I was initially not sure whether the copyright allowed the upload of the cartoon - it was decided not to have it on Commons but on en-wikipedia, and to use it but once. That is why the English article has it whilst the German version only offers a translation without the image. I assume the story is inspiring, even if it is not strictly encyclopaedic - that is at least what the blogger proves, and it seems I have taken the point others can use as an inspiration. Quite delighted. --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:59, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I second the motion to heavily reduce Snoopy content on this page. Could it be moved to a separate article or section, maybe a "Controversey" or "Problems with Defintion" section? For a layman trying to get a sense of what a novel "is" the Snoopy comic is, IMO, more confusing than helpful. (Though it may be valid in illustrating its point) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.168.68.218 (talk) 07:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

a novel is fictional

In the Oxford English Dictionary (surely no source is more reliable for defining something) a novel is defined as a "fictitious prose narrative of book-length". http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/novel has either "fictitious" or "fictitious or partly ficticious".

This doesn't mean that a novel can't be "true" or more revealing than a history. But attempts to rededfine a novel should go further down the article, not be in the lead. BillMasen (talk) 19:06, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I decided to adress the fictionality issue further down. The precise option is most certainly that a narrative turns into a novel, if the art of narration is seen as more important than the truth of the story. The original definition of "novel" (i.e. the 17th and 18th century definition) is actually that it is non fictional when compared with romances. The fictionality issue is introduced later to facilitate debates designed to exclude certain novels (like all those scandalous ones) from all further debates one would try to restrict to truly fictional works. --Olaf Simons (talk) 19:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Of course, I know that meanings can change. But contemporary usage, as attested by the dictionaries, says fictional. Obviously fiction can contain facts; but because not everything in a novel has to be factual, it is fiction. Unless we find a reliable source which says that an entirely non-fictional book can be a novel, there's no alternative but to define a novel as at least partly fictional.

Everyone knows that novels are sometimes based on real events. Nobody is in danger of reading this article and concluding that, after all, the Wall Street crash must not have happened :) BillMasen (talk) 20:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's a Wiki. You can put it in. Yet if you ask me as a literary historian: ist it essential? I'd say no. A novel kann be extremely true - so true that you can be in al sorts of trouble if you actually publish it, since not every one wants you to publish what you lived through. You can also make it non-autobiographcal and true. Often you publish sth as an novel, as true histories are far less true that the account you turn into the novel. The real criterion is the story telling on paper. Tell the same thing on youtube and that will not be a novel. If you really want to go for the quintessential definition then fiction is out. 2ndly: There are lots of fictions that are not novels - lies of all sorts, forgeries. But as I said, you can say "this famous dictionary says it, and I feel it has to be so", and than you will get it in there. Yet strictly speaking fictionality is the problematic and misleading criterion - you might not like the scholarly reservation here. --Olaf Simons (talk) 21:55, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Well yes, if I put it on YouTube it's not a novel, but I didn't say all fictions were novels. I said that if a book isn't partly fiction then it's not a novel. "fictional" is not the same as "untrue", except metaphorically speaking. When Franco said he wouldn't bomb Madrid, it was a lie, but it wasn't "fiction" because he expected and wanted people to believe him. Orson Welles reading of the War of the Worlds is a good illustrative example: he read a story whihc said that Earth was being invaded by Martians. He didn't expect people to believe him, but they did.

Academics always want to challenge common definitions, even if they're true :). I'm not against that, but I think that we should employ the commonly accepted definition before introducing disputes over it, later in the article. BillMasen (talk) 22:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Well so far the criterion comes in the second paragraph. I had formulated the first to include all things that must be the case, and the second to add all controversial issues. I think it is wise to do it this way. Write as exactly as you can about your last day, it will be a novel, though we can both decide to cut out any bit of fictionality. --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:17, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

popular mythology?

Why is the idea that authors, of high literature or otherwise, are motivated by some kind of an urge to write called a mythology? Following "inner voices, a feeling for injustice, an urge to face a personal trauma" etc. are standard reasons given by most writers for what makes them write. After all, most people who choose to pursue a particular line of work (not to mention something as precarious and unconventional as fiction writing) say they answer some kind of a calling, or at least a personal inclination. I don't think it's some kind of ratified, elitist, self-serving illusion, but a concert and accurate statement of motivation (in fiction and other pursuits as well). I suggest the phrase "popular mythology" be removed. If you like, the claims of answering some inner voice do not have to be stated as an objective fact. You can enclose the phrase "their inner voices ... artistic vision" in quotation marks. This, I think, would be a good compromise . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.229.237.39 (talk) 13:34, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, as mythologies rather than the essential truth, these things develop. The author's motivation ia part of a cultural construction. You do not have the same statements from all periods and cultures. Secondly: You do have a strong tendency in our culture to connect writing to these statements - it sells to be an author who just had to write this. You are in that case more than the mercenaries of the field who simply write for money, you can brand your writings as authentic, no-external-motivation driven, full of inner and deeper truth etc. If you worked for a big publisher like Random-House you might be more skeptical and see this as a kind of popular mythology you should feed with authors you present as the public wants to haven them. There is a good deal of belief in all this. Readers want to read their authors under special premises of what urges them to do that job. Which does not mean that authors and would be authors do not actually feel it the way they speak about it - thats part of a mythology, it eventualls shapes your very experience of what is going on, when you do a thing.

As for the term and the critical concept: you might like to read Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957). --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:06, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that claims about the urge to write sell anything (as you state in the article, bestselling authors do not usually entertain such views). If these ideas do pay off in some way (say in the form of elite recognition) this does not in itself make them myths. Just because a claim is expedient does not automatically invalidate it. I don’t think postmodernist critiques of authorship are quite relevant either (by the way, Barthes’ “Death of the Author” would be the seminal statement here). What these critics attempted to undermine was the image of the author as a privileged originator of meaning, or as an individual endowed with some unique talent. Why someone chooses to become a writer of fiction is a different, and a more mundane issue in my opinion. Just as practitioners in many fields are motivated by a “calling”, a sense of responsibility, writers (at least of “serious fiction”) are motivated by some kind of an urge to express themselves, work out some inner struggles, or deal with a social/philosophical issues. Of course, such claims are sometimes used to elevate authors to the exalted heights of oracles, but this does not mean the basic idea is entirely wrong. I understand you probably use the term “myth” in the more general sense found in Barthes, something like a cultural construct. But this seems to me to border on original research. (By the way, your very first statement asserts the point you're trying to make, which sounds like begging the question). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.250.250.23 (talk) 07:53, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed; there are much more obvious ways of making a quick buck or even a living than writing fiction: it's a huge risk, and the cost/benefit ratio is very unfavourable. I seriously doubt that that many writers are motivated by the promise of writing a best-seller: everyone who has seriously started to write a longer work is probably caring, interested and informed enough not to hold such illusions, or at least realise the tremendously slim chances of hitting it big, much less immediately or continuously. The domain of the dabblers is poetry, or fan-fiction, which isn't usually long enough to count as a novel, and is widely understood not to be a good starting point for a best-seller (except indirectly, as practice). Or think of NaNoWriMo: It's clearly about writing as a hobby. Of course, it also depends on the subject matter. Aspiring writers of hard science fiction are even less likely to seriously harbour dreams about hitting it big with a mainstream audience, about enchanting the masses not only with one's imagination, but also with one's meticulous calculations, dry technical explanations and efforts at building massive, intricate worlds with more characters, protagonists and plot than your standard space opera. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:32, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

These statements are besides the point. No doubt the author of fiction may feel, that he is driven by a feeling of injustice etc. to write the book he wants to write. What I stated (with modern theory) is that these notions are cultural artefacts, "mythologies". You do not find the same notions in other cultures or other periods. It is us who live in a post 19th-century culture in which an author of fiction can become an isolated genius, his nation's concience etc. etc. You do not have any of these notions before the 1750s in the field of fiction. Authors with such an urge would write theological confessions for instance before the 1750s. The article should make you aware that worldly fiction has a complex functionality in our modern societies (from commercial to highly responsible) - and that it had different functions in the past. Fiction played (to state it with Wittgenstein's 1938 Cambridge Lectures entirely different games in previous cultures). --Olaf Simons (talk) 13:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Novita

The article Novita has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references found no support in published (gBooks) WP:RS for the content of this article. I did not find novita used in the fashion indicated by the article. Fails WP:V and WP:N

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The article states that the Great Vowel Shift affected almost all European languages. I have only ever heard it discussed in English. The basic point remains, that prose is easier to translate than verse, if one wants to translate the verse form too, but I believe the reference to the Great Vowel Shift is inaccurate here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.211.206.44 (talk) 17:36, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Great Vowel Shift

The article states, in the section about Romances, that "the Great Vowel Shift affected almost all European languages." I have only ever heard it discussed in English. The basic point remains, that prose is easier to translate than verse, if one wants to translate the verse form too, but I believe the reference to the Great Vowel Shift is inaccurate here. Wikipedia's own page on the GVS, linked, only discusses it in English, so one of the two pages is clearly in need of editing. 66.211.206.44 (talk) 17:40, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes 'The Great Vowel Shift is English, but I don't know of a Europaen language (besides Icelandic, I guess), that can still read 13th-century verse and preserve rhythm and rhyme. German cannot and English cannot, give me languages that can. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:05, 10 December 2011 (UTC)