Old Literature

Literature Resources:

Classic Novels 

Daniel Defoe 

Research papers 


History of European Novel  

The eighteenth century early - with the diving of novel in the private and public scandal - had reached a progress achieved where a new reform seemed desirable. One could say that old Amadis leads its readers to the worlds dreamers, and the new novels, of high speeches and incredible acts of heroism, had made much to refine the taste. However they had created entirely new risks, with the stories of the love in which the children cheated their parents, and with which private and public chattering were published on the market.
             open Jane Barker was among the eighteenth voices of century which required a return to the old obsolete novel. Its “new” Romance Exilius (1715) opened with the sketch of a new tradition: the novel had, thus Jane Barker claimed, developed starting from Geoffrey Chaucer in François Fénelon; the last was the author who had just become famous with his Romance Telemachus of time (1699/1700).
             the English editors of Fénelon had carefully avoided the “Romance” term and had rather published a “new epopee in prose” - thus the forewords. Jane Barker insisted, however, to publish Exilius as “new a [...] Romance after the way of Telemachus”, and failed on the market. In 1719 his editor, Edmund Curll, finally removed the old pages titrates and offered works it like collection of novels.
             the great commercial success of nearest the decade, Robinson Crusoe de Daniel Defoe, appeared this very year and William Taylor, the editor, avoided these traps with a page titrates claiming neither the kingdom of the novels nor it of the lovesongs, but that of the stories, however with a design of page much tasting too much “new novel” with which Fénelon had just become famous.
             Robinson Crusoe de Defoe was all but a novel, like limit was included/understood then. It was not short, it did not concentrate on an intrigue, and it was not known as for a clear cut-point. Ni was Crusoe by anti-hero of a satirical novel, although it spoke at the singular first anybody and stumbled in all kinds of miseries. It did not really invite the laughter (although the readers of the taste would read, naturally, all its proclamations about being a true man like fact in good mood). The simulated author was serious: against his the will its life had introduced it into this series of the majority of the romantic adventures. It had fallen into the hands from the pirates and years survived on an uninhabited island. It had the survived whole this - only one sailor of York - with the exemplary heroism. If the readers read his work because a novel, full with the fine invention, it could not blame them. He and its editor knew that very that it had to say was strictly incredible, but they would claim it were true (and if not, readable still as a good allegory) - this is the complex play what puts this work in the fourth column of the model above.
             the publication of Robinson Crusoe directly did not lead to the reform of the market of century of mid-18th. The books of Crusoe were published as doubtful stories; they played the game of the eighteenth market early scandalous of century, with the novel entirely integrated in the kingdom of the stories. They even seemed reprinted by one of the newspapers of London like probably true relation of the facts. Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Robinson turned by Rousseau Crusoe in traditional decades later, and that took another century before one could see the book of Defoe because the first English “novel” - published, because Watt of Ian saw in 1957 - as response to the market of the French lovesongs.
             the reform of the eighteenth market early of century of the novels came with the production from the traditional ones: saw 1720 that the decisive edition of traditional of the European novel published in London with titles of Machiavel with Marie De Lafayette. The “novels” of Aphra Behn had during the last decades appeared in the collections of its work. The author of the 1680s had become traditional to date. Fénelon had become traditional years ago, as Heliodorus have. Work of Petronius and Longos appeared, equipped with the forewords which put them in the tradition of the Huet fiction of prose had defined. The fiction of prose itself, according to criticisms', had a history of rises and swallows: after having run in a crisis with Amadis, it found its remedy with the novel. It now needed continuous care. However, on the whole, it could claim to be the most elegant part of the letters the beautiful ones, the market segment in the larger market of the literature, embracing the new traditional ones.
             Novels of T raitté de l'origine des de Huet, d'abord édités en 1670 et maintenant circulant en un certain nombre de traductions et d'éditions, gagnées une position centrale parmi ces écritures qui ont traité la fiction de prose. Le traité avait créé le premier corpus des textes à discuter et c'avait été le premier titre qui a démontré comment on pourrait « interpréter » des fictions mondaines, juste comme un théologien interpréterait des parties de l'evangile au cours d'une discussion théologique. L'interprétation a eu besoin de ses objectifs, naturellement, et Huet avait offert un certain nombre de questions une pourrait demander : Queest-ce que le travail fictif d'une culture étrangère ou d'une période éloignée nous a indiqué au sujet de ceux qui ont construit la fiction ? Ce qui étaient le cultu ral needs such stories answered? Are there fundamental anthropological premises which make us create fictional worlds? Did these fictions entertain, divert and instruct? Did they — as one could assume when reading ancient and medieval myths — just provide a substitute for better, more scientific knowledge, or did they add to the luxuries of life a particular culture enjoyed? The ancient Mediterranean erotic stories could afford such an interpretation.
             The interpretation and analysis of classics placed readers of fictions in an entirely new and improved position: it made a vast difference whether you read a romance and got lost in a dream world or whether you read the same romance with a preface telling you more about the Greeks, Romans, or Arabs who produced titles like the Aethopica or The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (first published in Europe from 1704 to 1715 in French, and translated immediately from this edition into English and German).