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Here’s an essay on the Prospect website that I enjoyed reading a lot - exploring the pluralistic nature of essay and novel-writing, and the links between the two forms. Definite brain-food rather than material for relaxation, but well worth the effort, I felt.

The democracy of Don Quixote

In or around 1605, European literature changed. No one realised it at the time, but when Don Quixote set off to save the world, a new kind of writing was born. The old forms of storytelling—the epic, the romance, the oral tale—would from now on be pitted against a boisterous young rival. Before long it would be universally acknowledged that a reader hoping to enjoy a good story must be in search of a novel.

The novelty of the novel is of course connected with the rise of printing, and the growth of a literate public with time and money to spare. Beyond that, the sheer scale of the form allows storylines to be extended and multiplied as never before, crossing and re-crossing each other with ample scope for coincidence, surprise and contingency, and hence for the depiction of characters with whom, as William Hazlitt put it, the reader can “identify.” But the most momentous way in which novels distinguish themselves from other kinds of storytelling is that they give a central role to a supernumerary character—the narrator—whose task is to transmit the story to us. All kinds of stories invite us to imagine the characters they portray, and involve ourselves in their fortunes and their follies; but to engage with novels we need to go one step further and imagine the people telling the story, or even identify with them. Read on here…

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 7:14 pm and is filed under 2007 news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.