Re:Lost transcription of Tale of Genji chapter found in Japa...
by mirimir on Saturday October 12, 2019 @03:45AM
(#21231327)
It's arguably not the first novel.[0]
> Using a very lose definition of a novel as a long prose narrative describing fictional characters and events, it’s hard to understand why some older works don’t qualify. The Golden Ass, which involves the journey of a man whose insatiable curiosity gets him turned into an ass and who ends up joining a cult of the goddes Isis, arguably meets these criteria. Still, the distinctive writing style, often including verse, interwoven tales (including, in the case of The Golden Ass, the myth of “Cupid and Psyche”), and distinctive mix of seriousness with satire, humor, and downright vulgarity does support differentiating early works of extended prose from the “modern novel”—although the boundaries of this differentiation vary from one scholar to the next and are being broken regularly by today’s fiction writers.
Indeed, some of my favorite novels feature some or all of those "non-novel" features. But whatever ...
> Using a very lose definition of a novel as a long prose narrative describing fictional characters and events, it’s hard to understand why some older works don’t qualify. The Golden Ass, which involves the journey of a man whose insatiable curiosity gets him turned into an ass and who ends up joining a cult of the goddes Isis, arguably meets these criteria. Still, the distinctive writing style, often including verse, interwoven tales (including, in the case of The Golden Ass, the myth of “Cupid and Psyche”), and distinctive mix of seriousness with satire, humor, and downright vulgarity does support differentiating early works of extended prose from the “modern novel”—although the boundaries of this differentiation vary from one scholar to the next and are being broken regularly by today’s fiction writers.
Indeed, some of my favorite novels feature some or all of those "non-novel" features. But whatever ...
0) https://latelastnightbooks.com/2016/02/04/first-novel-and-th...