V.V. (1) Picaresque novel

[jbor]

The medieval courtly romances were generally verse though prose variations
did develop (Malory's *Le Morte D'Arthur*, for example). But the readership
was obviously very restricted. I think that in the mid-sixteenth century you
are also looking at other factors such as the rise of the printing press and
increasing literacy amongst the middle classes, all of which contributed to
the popularisation of the novel form in Europe, and it just so happened that
the Spanish picaresque novels, and *Don Quixote* in particular, were
Johnny-on-the-spot. There were "novels" in Dynastic Egypt, pre-medieval
Japan (eg. the tale of *Genji*, which was written by a woman) of course, and
Scheherezade's tales were told from about the 10th century. But *The
Thousand and One Nights* did not become known in Europe until the 18th
century.

The housebound woman living vicariously through pulp romances is a
gratuitous and patronising (male) stereotype which doesn't have much
significance for historical actuality in any era, I would imagine, Emma
Bovary notwithstanding.



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>From: jporter <jp4321 at IDT.NET>
>

>> From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
>
>>
>> Yes, I think that perhaps the larger point that I was trying to get at (and
>> I'm not sure that Eco would disagree either) is that "the novel" as a
>> discrete and marketable literary form directly derives from the Spanish
>> picaresque (through *Don Quixote*). In a sense all novels are picaresque,
>> (meta-)representing as they do the *author's* journey through a (real or
>> imagined) social setting. Thus is the author of novelistic fiction (like) a
>> pícaro; and postmodern fictions are very self-conscious about this aspect of
>> their genesis. Think too of Pynchon's comment at the end of the *Slow
>> Learner* 'Intro' about the "picaresque life" the Beats "seemed to us to be
>> leading" and his consciousness of his own corollary transition from
>> 'apprentice' to 'journeyman'. (21-22)
>>
>> best
>
> I wouldn't think so, except maybe from the masculine point of view. Surely
> the first readers were women, and the first novels love stories, not the
> bizarre repressed homoerotic longings of Don Quijote and gilligan, er,
> sancho.