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When was the first English novel and what does it tell us?

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 08:54 authored by Andrew HadfieldAndrew Hadfield
This article seeks to explore and challenge the common assumption that the novel is a peculiarly modern form and that its development in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is central to the onset of modernity. The real story is undoubtedly more complex and more interesting. The novel does dominate modern literature but the particular form that it has assumed resulted from diverse and contingent factors. This suggests that there is nothing inevitable about the rise of the realist novel; other counterfactual literary histories could have happened and we should be wary of assuming that modern literature resulted from an inexorable process.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century

ISSN

0435-2866

Issue

10

Page range

23-34

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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