The Earliest Novel - Where to Start?

If we were to rely on established definitions or starting points for the novel, "where to start?" might be a fairly simple question. But we are explorers here, and like Columbus setting off for the Indies, it's not even clear in which direction we should go. Throw out Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as a starting point and someone will remind you that there are novel-like prose works that predate it, like Don Quixote. Is Robinson Crusoe then the first English novel? (Refining the boundaries works wonders for precise definition.) It might be, until someone suggests that you may want to take a look at Aphra Behn's Oroonoko.

At the beginning of his book A Brief History of Time (1988), Stephen Hawking relates an anecdote about difficult cosmological questions addressed by science and mythology. In a lecture, he writes, a scientist describes

how the earth orbits around the sun, and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down." ( Brief History of Time 1)

Determining the origin of the novel seems like a similar exercise in ever-multiplying possibilities. Once we pick a possible starting point, it seems like another earlier work emerges with qualities identifiable with those we've come to associate with novels. In fact, David mentioned to me just this morning that we may want to consider The Tale of the Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki), the 11th-century Japanese prose narrative, which has by some been referred to as the world's first novel, though not without disagreement.

All this brings us to the fundamental question: What is a novel? If we can figure that out, then we can point to what looks like the first one. (My dad argues that "When is the first novel?" and "What is a novel?" are the same question; I think rather that the latter merely provides clarity for determining the former.) But to answer this question, I think we need to do two things. First, read some (which returns us to our original question of where to start) and begin inductively to describe each text's qualities, and second, consider what the novel is not, so that the qualities we identify can be contrasted with or compared to the not-novel.

I will begin with the anonymously written Lazarillo de Tormes (translated by Michael Alpert), a picaresque written around the mid-1550s. This book precedes Don Quixote but comes after many of the major romances and knight-errantry tales that Don Quixote parodies. If feel a little like I'm launching my boat on a journey to the East Indies, and I'm heading west.

Westward ho!
Randall

Essential Questions

A conversation needs some focus. So, in addition, to any general discussion of the novels that may occur, I'd like to consider from time to time, the following:

1. When does the novel begin?
2. What is a novel?
3. What does the novel do?
4. What sub-genres of the novel form and how do they affect our understanding of what the novel is?
5. Does or how does the definition of the novel change or evolve over time?
6. Do men and women, as innovating authors, develop the novel differently?
7. When does the distinction between literature and genre arise?
8. Does it matter what we mean when we say "novel"?

If you have suggestions for other questions, please feel free to add them.

Randall

What Books May Come

To get started, I've thrown together a list of prose fiction narratives. I expect we'll be beginning with Don Quixote, although antecedant works will turn up, and we can have a discussion about where the novel really begins at any time. My list goes up to the early 20th century, but I'll include only the first part of the list here (through 1750). These are the books we'll select our readings from. I don't intend to real all the books myself. Given the length and a list of almost 200 books written before 1900, it would probably take me 20 years to get through them.

As we progress I'll update the list with more recent titles. Anyone reading this is encouraged to suggest books that may be missing from the list. Just use the comment link. You're also invited to share your thoughts on what should be read and your reactions to any book we choose to discuss.

11th Century

Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of the Genji (ca. 1021)

16th Century

Anonymous - Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)

17th Century

Cervantes - Don Quixote (1605; 1615)
Quevedo - El Buscon (The Swindler) (1626)
De Lafayette - The Princesse de Cleves (1678)
Behn - Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave (1688)

18th Century (through 1750)

Defoe - Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Montesquieu - The Persian Letters (1721)
Defoe - Moll Flanders (1722)
Defoe - Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress (1724)
Swift - Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Prevost - Manon Lescaut (1731)
Holberg - The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground (1741)
Fielding, H - Joseph Andrews (1742)
Fielding, H - The Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great (1743)
De Graffigny - Letters of a Peruvian Woman (1747)
Voltaire - Zadig, or The Book of Fate (1747)
Richardson - Clarissa (1748)
Cleland - Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748)
Fielding, S - The Governess (1749)
Fielding, H - Tom Jones (1749)

Randall

Getting Started - Why "Novelogia"

The suffix "-logia," in Greek, refers to "sayings" or "discourses," and our term, "novelogia," is meant to suggest an open and wise discourse about the novel, both the general form and the specific examples that populate our libraries and bookshelves.

In the teaching of literature (which I do for a living), definition tends to precede example. William Blake, we learn in our Romantic Poets class, is a Romantic poet. Then we read some Blake, identifying him with Romantic qualities. The English Renaissance, we are told, is a period exemplified by the rise of humanism. Then we read Hamlet, thinking of it in terms of our definition of Renaissance lit. Think of it as the Norton anthologization of literary education.

Billy Collins has a fun poem lampooning this propagandistic approach called, appropriately, "The Norton Anthology of English Literature." He begins,

"It is easy to find out if a poet is a contemporary poet
and thus avoid the imbroglio of calling him Victorian
or worse, Elizabethan, or worse yet, medieval.

"If you look him up in The Norton Anthology of English Literature
and the year of his birth is followed only by a dash
and a small space for the numerals only spirits know,
then it is safe to say that he is probably alive."

But not only does this pigeonholing tend to be inexact ― are Blake and Wordsworth as much alike as their co-membership in the Romantic poets club suggests? ― but it takes the fun out of discovering literature on its own terms. Too much of studying literature is focused on what things mean, where things belong, what accounts for the art and often these questions are asked prior to the actual experience of reading. What's more, the novel defies a lot of this sort of definition.

Terry Eagleton tells us "that the novel is a genre which resists exact definition[s] … it actively undermines them. It is less a genre than an anti-genre. It cannibalizes other literary modes and mixes the bits and pieces promiscuously together" (The English Novel 1).

To which we say, fine. Let's start near the beginning and watch the novel in its own habitat, watch it grow, evolve, multiply, defy, fail, and resurrect itself over time. Let's say that one comes to a legitimate understanding not through deductive observation ― all novels are lengthy fiction narratives in prose therefore this book I'm holding is a novel ― but through inductive observation. This blog is about reading (first) then talking about novels. It is about starting to read works from back when the novel was something new and therefore rebellious, with authors forging the genre as they went. And it is about coming organically to an appreciation of the form.

Please check your Norton anthologies at the door.

Randall