V.V. (1) Picaresque novel

[jbor]

Prior to the *Satyricon* by Petronius Arbiter (1st century AD), Daphnis and
Chloe* by Longus and *The Golden Ass* by Apuleis (both 2nd century AD) there
is *The Milesian Tales* (2nd century BC). But from Middle Kingdom Egypt (c.
1200 BC) there is also *The Princess of Backstaw*, *The Predestined Prince*
and *Sinuhe*, all of which are literary fictions which nowadays would be
described as novels. I'm not too sure what the relevance of value judgements
such as "richly developed" is.

Jody's right in that the word "roman", which is the word for novel in most
European languages other than English, derives from "romance". But in terms
of the way that the European novel becomes the preeminent literary form in
the 17-19th centuries then it is the Spanish picaresque novel which is the
cynosure, and it is the burgeoning middle class which comprises both the
target audience and subject matter of the textual narrative (usurping "the
court" in these respects).

I agree with Vaska's comments about the somewhat equivocal nature of the
pícaro's (or pícara, a la Moll Flanders or Oedipa Maas) tale of frustration
and failure -- the narrator's obsessive self-involvement, the
misunderstandings and lapses of judgement or insight to which she or he is
often prone, and the broad comedy of the plot, enact, or potentially enact,
an ironic distance between the author/reader and the narrative viewpoint,
and this tends also to undermine the social satire. (Or, at least, these
factors *allow* the reader enough space to interpret the narrative and
perspective as unreliable or antagonistic and to discard whatever implicit
social critique or overt moral lessons might be contained therein, *if he or
she so chooses*.) These character-narrators are very much the archetype for
all those problematic (anti-)heroes and flawed EveryMen and EveryWomen
protagonists in literature -- the schlemihls and outsiders and so forth --
in the tradition of the European novel which ensues. Further, the role of
the pícaro/a vis a vis the fictional narrative and his or her place in (or,
more generally, outside) the society depicted are *precisely* those of
an/the author -- she or he is a partisan tale-teller who is excluded from
societal and vocational norms, more often an observer than a participant
(though always aspiring to participate), and constantly reduced to seeking a
fortune (or, more often, bare subsistence) by bowing and scraping (or having
to "entertain") the general public she or he secretly scorns.

What is far more interesting than the development of literary genres
considered in isolation is looking at the way that reading and culture have
developed in concert with these. Developments in the rhetorical manipulation
of language and literary style go hand in hand with theoretical responses
(philosophy and criticism) which expose or explicate same, both of which go
hand in hand with the changing aspect of literacy in the society and the
purport or effect of what being "literate" actually means (eg. "critical
literacy") -- all of which engenders a more sophisticated and thoroughgoing
social and cultural awareness across the board and, ultimately (hopefully),
socio-political change.

best


----------
>From: Ron Meiners <random at hearme.com>
>To: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: V.V. (1) Picaresque novel
>Date: Wed, Oct 11, 2000, 9:24 AM
>

> The first novels, per my info, were The Golden Ass and Satyricon, both
> picaresque in a much more richly developed sense than the spanish- one that
> seems to have resurfaced in Pynchon, lots of Burgess, and others.
>
> Sort of tried to raise this as a topic once and failed- the patterns and
> implications of the earliest novels are much closer to the later works, or
> vice versa.