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Archive 1Archive 2

Moved Important Novels section here pending sources

The below was main article context, but is quite clearly original research until sourced and cited. When we can get sources for these claims, we can add them back into the article. Until then, they remain simply the opinions of selected Wikipedians at one point or another.

Western precursors

These are the earliest extant Western precursors to the novel:

Asian precursors

Early important Asian precursors to the novel include:

11th century

14th century

15th century

16th century

17th century

18th century

19th century

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.239.0.63 (talk) 08:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

20th century

The twentieth century also saw the emergence of many notable novelists of non-European and non-U.S. backgrounds. The years 1960–1967, in particular, witnessed the Latin American literary boom:

Notable African American novelists have included:

Modernism continued into the late twentieth century, sometimes becoming postmodernism (Toni Morrison [above] is part of that tradition):

Other novelists ignored or reacted against modernism:

word count

How many words are in a novel? The article doesn't say. What's the difference b/t a novel and a novella? Or what's bigger, an Epic? If no one knows, I'll check the reference desk. Llamabr 16:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Academic steroid abuse

This article is horribly inaccessible and pedantic. It reads like a bunch of grad students cribbing from drafts of their theses on the history of literature, not an encyclopedia article. The first sentence is a decent opening, but as soon as it hits the second sentence it leaps into the middle of a lecture on historical genres that only someone already familiar with the literature on this subject would find informative; it's of no use to someone who might come to this article simply wondering "What exactly is a novel?".

The "definition" section doesn't even offer a clear definition. Instead it starts out by talking about another category of writing (romances), and rambles forward from there in stilted run-on sentences about historical perspectives on the subject. Then the "real" history section begins with an overt thesis statement, which the article then proceeds to support with arguments and examples. The second paragraph of the section actually begins with the academic first-person plural pronoun, a blatant no-no under Wikipedia writing guidelines (though of course it's a standard construction in essays or lectures). The writing continues like this through most of the article. It's almost as if someone thought that "no original research" meant only that the research published here should not be imaginative. This whole series of assertions, arguments, and conclusions is out of place.

I'm a pretty well-read college graduate who got good grades in English Lit class, but never really studied literary theory or much of its history. That means I'm smart, but uninformed on this subject. And this article leaves me scratching my head. Perhaps that's a sign that it's not a well-written encyclopedic introduction to the subject. - JasonAQuest (talk) 05:47, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid, there is no easy definition - there would not be a debate if there was one. Any thing simple I could give you would just make you vulnerable - the article is designed to help my students to avoid the most blatant ad hoc truths - those "truths" which immediately call for a refutation if uttered in a test situation. Change the second paragraph "we have" to "there are" - if you feel that will be better style. Improve my language if you can - yet do not think that an article of simpler truths will be of better use. It will just arouse the question why others have a debate on such things as the "first true novel in English". If there are traps - and the complex question of the historical definition is one - we should state them (everything less would not prepare you for the debates you'd face). --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Seriously, this article is nigh unreadable for the average person who is not an English professor. It looks like there has been a lot of editing already done, so I would guess that it will be hard to get an understandable article out of this. But I fully agree with Jason that this is not a well-written encyclopedic introduction to what a novel is.

At the very least, break out the sections dealing with chunks of time ("The Rise of the Novel" and so on) to separate articles. Part of what makes this article unreadable is how long it is. Mcrawford620 (talk) 05:29, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Congreve Incognita (1692).png

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BetacommandBot (talk) 07:00, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Defoe Robinson Crusoe Heathcot 1719.gif

Image:Defoe Robinson Crusoe Heathcot 1719.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 19:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


Add description of Composite Novel genre?

Where would this section best be placed? Aristophanes68 (talk) 17:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The two external links given offer nothing regarding the history of novels, or any definition of the form and so I am removing them (one is a guide to writing a novel in 100 days, the other is about a so-called novel month when people try to complete a novel in 30 days). AshcroftIleum (talk) 05:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

table formatting

The table in the section "Embedded in the market of histories: 1650-1730" is causing the text to be misaligned, but I can't figure out how to fix it. Help? Aristophanes68 (talk) 01:56, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Some people not mentioned in this article...and broader problems with the article.

None of the following warrants even the barest mention in this article:

In general, the article is terrible. It almost entirely focuses on the 18th century and earlier. The 19th century, which is the classic era of the novel, is dismissed in a paragraph, and for the twentieth century we are sent off to other articles entirely, with not even an attempt to give a summary. Even for the 18th century, the article is essentially, well, not an encyclopedia article. It appears to be an essay about the origins of the novel, rather than giving the kind of basic grounding that an encyclopedia article ought. Of the authors above, I'd say that any article on the novel ought to at least mention Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky, James, Joyce, Scott, and Tolstoy, as a bare minimum. Probably all of the authors mentioned above, and some others I've not thought of, ought to be mentioned. At any rate, this article is a total mess. john k (talk) 04:42, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Looking over it, I'll be a little less harsh - the problem is not that the material here is bad, per se, just that it doesn't really belong here. Most of the material in this article ought to be moved to some sort of Origin of the Novel article. This article ought to give a much more basic summary of the history of the novel which focuses on actual, undisputed novels from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, and mentions major figures in the history of the novel and major novels. Obviously, a lot of work has been put into the article as it stands now, but the article is deeply unbalanced and doesn't fulfill its purpose as an encyclopedia article which is supposed to introduce the novel in general. john k (talk) 05:05, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I haven't carefully read the entire article, but it seems also that this article focuses FAR too much on the 18th century British novel, which seems to exclude a lot of important other places and periods. Person man345 (talk) 21:23, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

The history section should definitely be split off into its own article, something like History of novels (which currently redirects to this article). The historical information should then be summarised in this article (I'd say no more than 10 paragraphs, if that). This article should probably be broader in scope as well: the novel as an element of literature is already well covered, but we should probably include more information on novels as an economic commodity, their current popularity, production (i.e., writing and publication), as well as their use in literacy. Thoughts? – Liveste (talk • edits) 02:27, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Posted similarly up above before I read your comment, but yes, I agree that the bulk of the article needs to be split off into separate articles. Even multiple History articles would be good, linked to from a History of novels overview. I do also agree with the initial assessment from john k that the article is not an encyclopedia article about the novel. The language and erudition level needs to be toned down a bit, at least as concepts get introduced. Mcrawford620 (talk) 05:36, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month

I'll just go ahead and repost this here to have it as a reference. These are my ideas in a nutshell. I was thinking we could do a quick intro cover, then split it into several sub-sections on major developments in the novel. The ones currently on my mind were fantasy, stream of conciousness, minalamism, modernism, and post-modernism, as those were some of the major developments of the last century. Perhaps also discussion of crime noir, and the development of the murder mystery as a tenet of pulp and popular fiction. I even think we should have a section on Science fiction for the major figures and developments. That leaves us with a very wide, and broard encompassing project that I think could draw in a large number of people with different interests who would be apply themselves to this project, thus adding to the quality of the work that would get done. The 20th century section should be the longest section of the article, since more happened and changed in the 20th century than in all the previous four centuries, (going back to Don Quixote), combined.--Robert Waalk (talk) 23:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...I think the eighteenth century (as the period of the origin of the novel as currently conceived) and the 19th (as the period when the novel reached its classical high point) warrant nearly equal attention to the 20th. The fragmentation of the 20th, as well as its position closest to us, obviously mean that there needs to be a lot of discussion of it, but I don't think there should be disproportionate emphasis. I'd suggest that 20th century genre fiction, which generally has its own articles (some of which, at least, are good), should only be dealt with briefly in the main article - people can be sent off to science fiction and mystery (fiction) for more detail on those, and this article should focus more (but not exclusively) on the literary novel. THe material currently in the article, which largely focuses on the late 17th/early 18th centuries, ought to be cut down to a manageable size, and perhaps its current form moved somewhere else. In terms of genres, I think that gothic fiction needs to play a major part, as one of the main forms of the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th century. john k (talk) 23:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I know, I meant that the article should talk a lot about Mystery, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy because these three genres were the major developments of the 20th century. This period is when they were created, perfected, when the rules of eah genre were set, when they in effect became what we know them today. Yes though, I agree. We should have a paragraph or two on each thing, then redirect to its main page.--Robert Waalk (talk) 00:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I've gone ahead and taken the plunge, since no one else was going to. I've set up the layout of the article, and introduced twentieth century literature, and no I didn't soure anything, but I've read that stuff a million places, I figured some of y'all could help me out there, I am sourcing my other work. We really need to getting editing, not only writing out and filling out the twentieth century, but also editing and improving the writing in the other sections, and that includes researching more information. Plus I think the 20th Cent. introduction needs more information and is a little, someone please step up and add to it and help me fill it out.--Robert Waalk (talk) 00:39, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
A good start, although I think stream of consciousness should probably be discussed as an aspect of modernism, rather than in its own section. What's still really lacking is the 19th century. I'll try to work on that at some point, but it may be a while before I get a chance to really work on it. john k (talk) 15:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I added some, though a lot of it was without references...SF though...when was its golden age...? —Ed 17 for President Vote for Ed 23:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Other definition of 'novel'?

Shouldn't the article at least mention that "novel" can also mean "strikingly new, unusual, or different"?

This is mentioned in the etymology that is the first thing in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 06:59, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Editing pass

I'm starting on an editing pass. So far I've rewritten the lede and done a little beyond. I'll be doing some mix of being bold and coming here to the talk page to ask questions. If someone (Olaf especially) thinks I'm changing meanings in a way that is incorrect, please tell me. Some of the prose here is pretty confusing, and it is possible that I will not even understand it well enough to copyedit.

Speaking of which, some things that clearly need clarification (I'm sure there will be more):

  • "sujets of private interest": do you really want the obscure, academic "sujet" rather than the ordinary English "subject"?
use subject (my German makes me think of individual, person, subject, verb, object all of which I do not think of with sujet)
DONE (used "subject matter") - Jmabel | Talk 22:03, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "The requirement of a certain length[2] used to risk an epic totality of life…": I have no idea what "risk" is supposed to mean here.
The novelist employs the length of his book to present a totality of life. I am not too happy with it. There is this Snoopy cartoon where the little dog writes a two volume novel of ten lines - dealing with the totality of life in the way people like Lucaks would like to have it. So actually it would rather be two points. Often critics take them together to justify the length criterion.
DONE - Jmabel | Talk 22:03, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "18th-century reevaluation of extended performances…": why "performances" rather than "works"? Is this specifically supposed to embrace (for example) stage performances, with literary works, or even stage works being only an afterthought? If not, this is an unnecessarily pretentious word.
No has got nothing to do with play - felt it was neutral. Thing is in any case that the short novel grows long with the "novels" of Eliza Haywood at the beginning of the 1720s. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:19, 12
DONE - Jmabel | Talk 22:03, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

February 2009 (UTC) - Jmabel | Talk 06:59, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah - you're doing a good job - I wish I could do that. One thing I did not understand: "Prose won the market over verse in Western European in the course of the 16th century" - why European (adj) and not Europe (noun)? should it be Western European Languages?--Olaf Simons (talk) 09:25, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, "Europe" would be correct. I'd juggled it several ways (at one point I had "Western European market") and failed to remove these three letters when I put it in this order. - Jmabel | Talk 15:40, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The twentieth century - I will rewrite it, am not happy with its structure, much of what is said in 2.6.2 about Rushdie etc. and the importance of the novel in global confrontations will be put into the opening paragraphs of 2.6. The inner structure of the 2.6.2 is a mess (with interesting points like magic realism, surrealism, fanatsy missing) - I think I can do that better yet will need a silent hour of thought for it and a couple of hours to write it then. So don't go into the messy part at the end. --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

More questions/remarks:

  • "…both private reading and an object of public circulation." I don't think "an object of public circulation" is clear, especially the last word. I assume this refers precisely to the "Reactions to novels were to be found within other novels" following. If I understand correctly, how about "elements of a collective discourse." (I don't love that either, and I'm open to other suggestions.)
OK, here the entire thought: No.1: If you listen to a manuscript read aloud (as in the Chaucer-Troilus picture): If the reciter gets all too indecent and your surrounding reacts touched, you'll be forced to protest against the further recital. No.2: (before the arrival of print, as in the Melusine picture, commercial manuscript market of paper bound books) If you've got a smutty book and go to the copyist with the request of a copy it for you so that you can use it for your private indecent delight, you will be aware of the fact that the copyist will read every singe line of it and know all about your taste in such things. No.3 If the story is available in print, you buy it (pretending you are not aware of its indecent content), you read it at home with all the delight imaginable - but thats only half the fun. The other part is: you know that about a 1000 copies of the exact same book went into the world, where they found about ten times as many readers, and that is the intriguing thing. Your girlfriend (with whom you have never talked about such things) asks you for a special position - well, she may have read that as well, you understand the world if you read such stuff. You read it even if you do not like it, just in oder to know what all the others might have read. And you may never talk about that reading (such stuff is only openly discussed after the 1750s). That is the unique thing about novels. They are immensely private and at the same moment public. No.4: a play - as in No.1, you watch it in front of an audience and try to appear decent if that is advisable.
I want to make clear that you can either say: people grew more and more indecent between 1200 and 1750 (Victorian perspective), or that you take a media perspective - and then you'll understand your own reading, TV and Cinema consumption a bit better. Say as much as you feel fit without touching the decent reader. :)
DONE - Jmabel | Talk 22:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "If read in privacy they [scientific books] would still be the object of a public debate…": "If" here is a bit ambiguous. Do you mean to say "Although" or "Even if". The former would suggest they were always (or very typically) read in privacy; the latter that they were only sometimes read in privacy.
Fiction after 1400 goes prose and becomes the object of private reading. So what about science - that's also prose and silent reading - but not private. It is available in libraries of churches and universities, and openly discussed as literature. Whenever scientific prose gets too indecent, it is immediately excluded from material to be publicly discussed and dead. The early modern novel is not discussed. The after 1750 novel can be discussed (as high literature) or it can remain undiscussed (as trivial literature). The novel forked into two directions after the 1750s.
Again, be as explicit as you feel necessary.
DONE - Jmabel | Talk 22:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "the very term": which term? I'm guessing "literature" from the context, but want to make sure before I edit.

- Jmabel | Talk 05:50, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep, literature until 1750 the field of the sciences to be discussed in literary journals and histories of literature, after the transition period 1750-1830: plays, novels and poems. Those who discussed literature changed the subject, sth. else became literature. (The literature article should say it, yet I do not want to touch it.)
DONE - Jmabel | Talk 22:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Already with some small edits of mine, "The 19th and 20th centuries established a culture of public literary criticism and prestigious prizes to be granted to outstanding works and thus redefined the essential qualities of literary achievements: great literature has to follow quality standards defined by literary historians, they have to fit into histories to be written both by reacting on traditions and by finding a position towards these traditions." Fine down to "…granted to outstanding works…" Then:
    • "and thus redefined the essential qualities of literary achievements": Hmm. We're saying it was redefined, but not saying what was the definition prior to this. Care to fill that in?
Good novels before 1750 had to be elegant, beautifully composed etc. Between 1750 and 1900: responsibilities are discussed: The artist takes care of our morals or he is only paying respect to the rules of art. New situation since 1900: price committees have their policies and histories of previous awards. They focus on special genres, look for special qualities, try to make sure that not only men or women get it, or that only commonwealth authors get it, etc. All these rules have to be addressed not only by authors but by their texts. Books must allow certain discussions to get these prices. The modern novel is full of things you can discuss. We have created a set of new aesthetics around it with the claim that the greatest works of art will puzzle mankind forever. (You do not read that about Shakespeare in 1600, its a statement you read in post 1830 criticism. Modern materials tend to directly address the relevant debates.
I took a shot at getting some of this in there, tell me what you think. - Jmabel | Talk 22:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Right after that, not sure I like the rhetorical approach of just a colon to shift from factual statement to an obviously subjective and only vaguely attributed view (e.g. when we say "has to follow" rather than something like "was perceived by critics as having to follow").
Appreciate your sensitivity here.
DONE - Jmabel | Talk 22:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Past that, maybe after the colon the following instead of what is there (unless you feel this is inaccurate): "literary historians came to define great literature as that which adheres to certain standards of quality and fits into the history of literature, variously creating or reinforcing literary tradition, reworking literary tradition, or even reacting against prior literary tradition."
This is better than I could have put it (and so were all your other silent edits). --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:52, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
DONE - Jmabel | Talk 22:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

- Jmabel | Talk 06:12, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

  • I have little idea what the following sentence means to say: "Here one received different stories individual story tellers wanted to have presented in a round of story tellers and listeners." - Jmabel | Talk 06:10, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Did some cleanup here, and hope things got better.--Olaf Simons (talk) 12:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Yup. DONE. - Jmabel | Talk 19:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Continuing into the "questionable justification" section, where, again, I've done some tightening:
    • "before the first modern political pamphlet wars gained a wider critical reception through historical analysts": the latter part of this ("gained … analysts" is not clear to me. Analysts at the time? Analyzing the content of then-contemporary pamphlets? Or are you saying something else?
Tried to clarify that. The pamphlets more or less happened - the big thing were the works of analysis that followed, esp. in the field of political journals. Bayle, Swift, Defoe (and numerous German political journalists) had to be mentioned here. terrible..
    • "Pyrrhonism debate": I can guess by analogy what this must mean, but our article Pyrrhonism refers only to ancient philosophy. Care to expand on this a bit, either here or in that article?
      • The main book is the one Völkel wrote - the Pyrrhonism debate did have a 17th century wave. Pierre Bayle eventually became the central author. Kill me but that's intellectual history I hardly dare to come up with. Martin Mulsow is another Expert here, Jonathan Israel's Radical enlightenment might have some remarks on this debates in English.
    • (bullet point) "A conflict of genres designed to offer alternatives to the old medieval fictional production — the main problem was here caused by the Amadis, the first international bestseller on the market of printed fiction." This is rather unclear on several counts. Does "designed" mean that this was conscious intent? Whose? What was the "problem"?
      • Tried to clarify that with an outlook on the following chapters.
        • On this point you have expanded, but (I think) still not clarified. What is the "conflict"? (Just multiplicity of genres? How is that a conflict?) What is the "problem" caused by or reflected by Amadis? - Jmabel | Talk 01:10, 17 February 2009 (UTC) I see, this is taken up later in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 04:22, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
You found an elegant solution here --Olaf Simons (talk) 14:19, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

- Jmabel | Talk 19:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

      • We will be old men when this is done. I left you a hidden remark where I felt it was not too clear what I meant with responsibilities and consensus. History in our societies has a function one can experience with all clarity in Germany. You establish historical commissions to discuss historical responsibilities. Did the Swiss steal Jewish Gold in a collaboration with Nazi Germany - this is not decided by the churches or by politicians, but, strangely, by historians. I worked in one of these commissions from 1999 to 2001 (on the question of Bertelsmann's responsibilities as a Nazi publisher). Why do Historians get such jobs? Because they guarantee a scientific and hence pluralistic debate. Journalists, the churches, politicians can listen to what Historians say at a press conference about the allegedly protestant publishing house. That's a new arrangement the 19th century nations worked out. Absolutely unconceivable before... Caxton's King Arthur is history in a sense of history we have lost. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by Olaf Simons (talk • contribs) 16 Feb 2009

May be I'll take another look at the pyrrhonism lines - later - I feel uneasy here. Everything else has become more fluent. A few grammatical problems I had (things that sound strange in my German ear):

  • grew in course of the 17th century
in the course?
  • It inherited narrative plot from the realm of histories,
narrative plot without article?
  • fashionable among urban female in French and German readers of the younger generation,
is the word order correct?
  • took the next step towards, as its hero experienced recent world history,
towards without an object of direction?

Its probably all all right and my own language is the mysterious obstacle... --Olaf Simons (talk) 14:19, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

You are right (as seen on the reproduction)
You write but you will be nobody unless they discuss you, the discussion is your marketing platform. I'll say more about it further down.
  • "The term “novel”—today almost ironically connected with the appearance of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe…": in general, Wikipedia style avoids assertions of irony made in the narrative voice of the article, which is supposed to remain neutral. Is there something citable for this irony? Does this side remark about Robinson Crusoe really need to appear in this place at all? Also, when you say "The story of the sailor", are you referring back to Robinson Crusoe? Because in between you refer to William Painter's work, with which I am totally unfamiliar, and which for all I know might also be the story of a sailor. And (for that matter) while Robinson Crusoe is a sailor, most of the book is his story as a shipwrecked man on an island, not as a sailor. - Jmabel | Talk 03:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
You are right here (irony), I knew the guideline as admin of the German WP. Meant it rather neutral. The once romance became what it originally stood challenged, a "novel" - a thing for which one had to redefine novel as the long thing. (And to invent the novella as the new short thing). I can live without the word as it is explained later on. Painter is a collection of novel(l)as, D. Manley revised some of them in 1720 with her "The Power of Love in Seven Novels" (Painter's Novella and Manley's Novel were exactly the same thing, no one spoke of novellas any longer in Defoe's days, novel had become the word. Cervante's collection was a collection of novels, the Arabian Nights offered novels, Behn wrote them, Congreve and so on. The 1720s saw the growth of long novels, the 1760s to 1790s experienced a divide with novels becoming the realistic thing, romances the dark and Gothic subject matter. By 1790 one could begin to call Robinson Crusoe a novel. I should say that more clearly in the 18th century chapter, and omit the irony word here. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Another passage I'm not sure I follow well enough to rewrite: "It allowed historical publications to appear that could not risk less fictional formats. The question was not whether one should separate the markets of true and fictional histories but whether one would be able to establish critical discourses to evaluate all the interesting production."
    • What do you mean by the first sentence? Would it be accurate to say, "It allowed historical publications to appear that could not be openly presented as factual, because of the threat of libel suits or similar issues. These were shielded by the veneer of fiction."
    • As for your second sentence here, I'm lost. "The question" asked by whom? "Advocates of the free press"? But were advocates of the free press all necessarily interested in the establishment of "critical discourses" about all forms of "interesting" writing? "Interesting to whom"? Perhaps several things are being conflated here. Anyway, if you could take a shot at expressing this differently, it would probably be helpful. - Jmabel | Talk 04:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "By the 1680s the 'novel' had beaten the 'romance' as the modern alternative of the shorter story." Just plain unclear. Are you saying that "novels" in this period were shorter than "romances" and were winning out for that reason? Then "By the 1680s the shorter 'novel' had beaten the 'romance' as the modern alternative." If you are saying something else, what is it? - Jmabel | Talk 04:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, novels were shorter, that was seen as their big advantages (since it changed everything else from style to justification of story telling). Do not quite know whether I have improved that. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC) (Here is Coles Dictionary 1713 on "novels" and "romances" - you want to have that for what has become chapter 2.4.1?
Novel f. new.
Novels, 168 Volumes of the civil law (added by Justinian) to the Codex; also little Romances.[...]
Romancist, sp. a composer of
Romances, feigned histories.
Romanize, to imitate the
Romans, people of Rome.
Romanists, Papists.
  • "Jane Barker's Exilius: or, The Banish'd Roman. A new Romance [...] written after the Manner of Telemachus (1715)> had openly declared it as a fact." Had openly declared what as a fact? And the sentence that follows, about Robinson Crusoe, is even more confusing. - Jmabel | Talk 04:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "Robinson Crusoe had appeared on its market with dubious potentials": I have no idea what you mean by "dubious potentials". Or many ideas. What I don't have is one clear idea. - Jmabel | Talk 04:20, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Hope I clarified this, it was a reference to the above mentioned status.--Olaf Simons (talk) 14:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (1644–1712) had risked similar confrontations of individuals and the real world." I'm not sure what you mean here, but "risked" seems wrong. Just "presented"? Or something else? Maybe "confrontations" is also problematic. Since I'm not sure in what respects Courtilz de Sandras work is be "similar" to Robinson Crusoe, I'm at a loss. - Jmabel | Talk 04:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Both authors have lonely individuals facing the "real" world in situations no romancer would invent. Ian Watt had said Defoe began it, but it was rather common on the market of (French romantic) pseudo histories. --Olaf Simons (talk) 14:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I hope I could bring more clarity into this. I am not too happy about the headlines which have now become part of the table of content. I had given all these big chapters a kind of introduction, which led to chapters on texts - 2.4.1 to 2.4.4 have now entered the level of these text chapters. I see, however, your good reasons for giving these passages headline status. Perhaps one should have turned them into plain text headlines using bold letters, I had experimented with that option and was not happy with the result... All your other remarks were good - hope I could bring clarity into it. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
I tried to harmonise things a bit (basically to avoid some repetitions - don't know how many it should have in oder to offer a plot line). The early headlines of 2.4 - the present text gives them as plain text bold, you may turn them back into individual headlines. I experimented with this option as I felt the 18th century needed a second chapter for its experimental production from Voltaire to Sterne. All that is killing me (there are so many titles I would like to mention - Laclos, at least him, his Les Liaisons dangereuses, wonderful stuff - but this must not become a book, and I feel already insecure with what I have done... --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
"ambivalent proposals" is no clearer than "dubious potentials". What are you trying to say?
And you've made no change at all to "had risked similar confrontations of individuals and the real world", so it is precisely as obscure as it was before. - Jmabel | Talk 05:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Ah, its "comparably" you dislike. Compared to romances and novels of the central production. Fénelon's Telemach is didactic invention, obviously romance. The Arabian Nights are sold to be read as fiction. Modern novels of realism like Zola's are again clearly literature, fiction, "A novel". Defoe is not "literary realism", at least not in the newspaper edition, not in the preface of the 1st edition, not in Crusoe's own statements in the preface to the third volume, where he states both that he is as real as any person on earth, and again plays with all the alternatives - i.e. that he is as real as Don Quixote and Jesus Christ, who had to use fictions just as he had to. All this is comparably ambivalent, trying to state the either and the or much more than realist literature would ever want to do. Authors of realism want to be praised for their creative powers to invent and depict reality "realistically". --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "The market of the metropolis London, the anonymous international market of the Netherlands, the urban markets of Hamburg and Leipzig generated new public spheres that began to call for a reform at the beginning of the 18th century." Not sure I follow that: seems to be saying that the public spheres called for a reform? Vague, confusing. - Jmabel | Talk 05:46, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Better? --Olaf Simons (talk) 14:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Somewhat. "Once private individuals began to use them as platforms on which they could openly refurbish their blemished reputations the public began to call for a reformation of manners." Are the "private individuals" authors? Does "them" here refer to novels? And what is meant by a "reformation of manners"? I suspect there must be a more specific word or phrase than "manners".
yes: Madame D'Aulnoy, Madame DuNoyer, Delarivier Manley, Christian Friedrich Hunold (Menantes), John Dunton the publisher - I could create a long list: they see that they have lost their reputations, so they use the press to change them - and write fictions in which they produce positive versions of the very stories that trouble them. There is loads of dirty linen washed in fiction between 1670 and 1730.
  • "The reform became the main target of the 18th-century novel." Huh? Presumably the main target of the novel was to tell a story & sell books, not to reform the book market. - Jmabel | Talk 02:10, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
The 18th century novel offered a reform of its own moral standards, knowing that this was what the public wanted them to do - Tatler and Spectator and these journals who voice the public, call for improved moral standards. Earlier Journals had called, on the contrary, for more of the scandalous revelations, feeling that they would reform us by exposing vice wherever it was lurking. You are right: novelists want to make money - but that#s the point: a novelist of the 1740s will make it with the promises you'll find on the title page of Pamela.
  • I can't readily parse "The discussion of fiction the secondary discourse finally adopted began within the production of novels." Can you say this some other way? - Jmabel | Talk 05:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
At first almost the entire debate about novels was within novels. Huet wrote the first history of fiction as a preface to a novel. Other novels incorporated criticism e.g. Don Quixote or Le Roman Comique within their plots. Authors criticised each other. The secondary debate was until the 1720s concerned with the sciences and very rarely with fiction. During the 18th century this changes. Journals begin discussing fiction. Where do they find a debate of fiction they can adopt? In the prefaces of fiction - in Huet, in the prefaces of recent editions of Lucian, Petronius etc., in Don Quixote, in Scarron. They adopt a debate and use it to call for further reforms. One hundred years later, you will be able to write a dissertation on novels, 200 years later you will have discussions of latest novels on television in blogs or here - but that's in the future. The 18th century has to start the secondary discourse. Once that discourse begins, novelists begin to react and bring up topics to be discussed. The entire 19th-century move towards reality in fiction is part of an interaction with us, those who demand such works to speak about them...
The 1740s heroes look very unrealistic when they come up. The authers produce life stories to make them plausible - they have become so sensible and sensitive, so caring and nice because since their childhood... I'll see hat I can do, have written these things with a bulk of novels in my head...) --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I tried to bring clarity into it - offered some more footnotes as well in order to provide examples, and get back home to correct the last fiction assignments. Something needs to be invented: A "Dick Head" vandalism undo-bot to protect the Richard Head article. The joke should have a beard by now (as the Germans say) (don't know whether this makes sense in English). --Olaf Simons (talk) 14:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Not a cliche in English, but completely understandable. - Jmabel | Talk 18:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Another hard sentence to make sense of: "Prose fiction as a carrier of fashions of conduct needed cultural centers to guarantee the authenticity and purity of its content." I can read this several ways, and none of them are terribly clear. Examples of three plausible readings (with part of the sentence deliberately omitted):
    • "The authenticity and purity of the content of prose fiction… was guaranteed by [the existence of] cultural centers."
    • "The authenticity and purity of the content of prose fiction… was guaranteed by [what was said about it in] cultural centers."
    • "For prose fictions to carry fashions of conduct, authors required access to the centers where those fashions were set."
Or maybe it's something else entirely. Any help? - Jmabel | Talk 07:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
re-wrote the passage - better? (also transformed the fake headlines into real ones giving them a new level - not beautiful but may be a compromise to allow easier editing...) --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Morals. I am not quite sure whether the illustrations went to far. One can see the like in the Fanny Hill article and I feel it is part of the genre's history just as the images of 19th and 20th-century novelists who became political figures. Yet I am not sure how far the general article reflect that. --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Everything above here is either DONE or I'll get to it again as I work my way down the article. - Jmabel | Talk 04:23, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

  • "a production of proclaimed moral values": what does this mean? What it says, effectively, is that "proclaimed moral values" were "produced". Surely that cannot be what you mean to say. - Jmabel | Talk 05:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
openly stated on title pages, I'll see what I can do
No, I thought of titles that openly stated (proclaimed): this book is to improve your/our moral values - as on the Pamela title page. Your version sounds good to me. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Another unclear phrase: "had conceived themselves as public figures in case their reputations were under threat": how would "conceiving oneself as a public figure" be a defense against one's reputation being threatened? - Jmabel | Talk 05:35, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
you are right. Difficult. The concepts of reputation changed so much. These people felt they had the right and the duty to fight duels in order to defend their reputations, even if someone blamed them of something they had actually and undeniably done. No one had a right to say anything that harmed their reputations. With the very same right they would use fiction to state what had "really" happened - in a way any such publication was a challenge: "if anyone says anything to the contrary, I'll defend this my version of the truth". You see that in a lot of German gallant student prefaces between 1690 and 1730. Women could not fight duels. They could immediately step into the public and state their versions of the truth (even if they were lying) (this was a peculiar thing - this acting as if one's reputation was intact, something they learned as part of their right as human beings). I'll try to state this without getting longer, have a look whether it fits to what I have said here... --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, Mrs Manley or Hunold (poet of Hamburg's opera and the most fashionable man in Hamburg) they see themselves as public figures - so does the DuNoyer, reporting from peace negotiations in Utrecht, so they use the public if they feel that certain gossip is causing problems...
  • Still quite unclear. Maybe the problem is with "in case". Do you mean "in cases where"? Or do you really mean "in case", that is "as a precaution against a [possible future] case where…". And I still don't see how "conceived themselves" fits in to this. Perhaps "took on the role of public figures and defended themselves in cases where their reputations were under threat"? But I'm having to stretch your words a lot to get to that, and I'm not at all sure it's what you meant. - Jmabel | Talk 00:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
I don't see the passage any longer, might have solved the problem yesterday. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm having some difficulty with the following paragraph:

To become a fashion if not the standard of modern behavior the new personality needed an environment of sympathy and understanding. Marie de La Fayette’s Princesse had fallen into a desperate situation as soon as she risked the outrageous transparency to confess her feelings for another man to her husband. The mid 18th-century created alternative options: the option of the melodramatic tragedy whose evil characters would exploit the weaknesses of the sentimental heroines; the option of the loving and caring environment that reacted with sympathy and understanding, instead of an urge to abuse its power; and the option of a new enlightened rationality with which one would escape the deadlock Marie de La Fayette’s Princesse produced with her confessions.

tried to say it clearer... --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
  • What is the "environment" in the first sentence? The novel itself? The real world in which the novel was read? The world within the novel?
social environment feel the English language is weak here. Next of kin are relatives. Neighbour as in "love thy Neighbour" - thats far better in German, "liebe Deinen Nächsten", those next around you.
  • "Marie de La Fayette’s Princesse… risked the outrageous transparency," so I assume we are to see her as one of the heroines "as transparent as possible" in the previous paragraph, but you then say "The mid 18th-century created alternative options": I assume from the chronology that "alternative options" must mean options unavailable to the 17th century Madame de La Fayette? This just doesn't flow together very well.
These deadlock situation became interesting - mid-18th-century authors wrote novels that showed ways out of such situations (the favourite 1660-1720s soltion was the intrigue, an option the Princess had dared not to use...) I'll try to say it in the text. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Am I right that the "alternative options" are for authors, not for characters? But the three options listed don't seem parallel to one another. "Melodramatic tragedy" is clearly an author's option in structuring a book; a "loving and caring environment" is presumably an option for the world in which a story would be set; and "a new enlightened rationality" could be that of the author, a character, or maybe even something else, I can't really work it out. Further "with which one would escape the deadlock": is "one" the author or the character?
  • Finally, "the deadlock Marie de La Fayette’s Princesse produced with her confessions" may be clear to someone who has read the book, but I have not, and it is not clear to me. A few sentences earlier you described her as falling into a "desperate situation," here a "deadlock". Both are a bit vague and I'm wondering if even some phrase of 8-10 words might make matters much clearer.

- Jmabel | Talk 04:23, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

see whether I have managed to state it with more clarity (and: thank you for your immense persistence.)
  • "The sentimental protagonists of the 1740s had already surprised and called for a debate of human nature and whether it was correctly depicted with these new novels." Is there a grammatical object missing after "surprised"? Surely they did not surprise a debate. - Jmabel | Talk 20:55, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
ah, yes English needs the audience here. Readers were surprised how anyone could be like these heroines and started a debate about the correct depiction of human nature (which they felt these novels had now finally detected and depicted). I'll see what I can do.
comparably to the other periods of German history. The thirty years war created a wave of German nationalism and so did the Seven Years war. The three wars from 1689 to 1721 were different. Germany/Austria stood in the centre and were fascinated by Europe (due to hopes that the English would punish France for its attack in Maintz, and help them to get the Spanish crown or Poland - Europe was suddenly so nice. The 1720s see a counter movement with a lot of shattered hopes and a rise of nationalism overshadows the entire period 1730 to 1945. Most German historians saw the decades 1680-1720 as the "gallant period", the period "between German baroque and German enlightenment", a period of no style at all (that is of no particularly German style). I was not quite ready to reiterate these judgments by simply stating that we see the national rise beginning in the 1730s. --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
That's terrible - there is a difference and I never felt there was one.--Olaf Simons (talk) 09:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
  • some more footnotes added. Wish I had Munich's state library at my fingertips. One language question (all your revisions were elegant): "France—and, one by one, the German states—adopted the new subject" does this give a temporal sequence - I feel it does. Germany should (see the Taine quote at the end of the passage) come first. I felt uneasy with my own formulation as I would not like to mention France after these states. I can (on the other hand) not omit these states as it was a move of individual states not of the entire nation at that time. Your parenthesis is elegant... --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:07, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
  • As to Yorick, we'll have to bring him back, he is the same or not. A person or parson who never appears in Shakespeare in person - only his skull is addressed with these words: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? (Hamlet, V.i)", click at the Tristram page next to it and you'll be in Sterne's graveyard and read the same words "Alas, poor Yorick!" - as part of Sterne's experimental and metafictional universe. "Sterne's Yorick" should suffice to make it clear that we'll get more than one Yorick. They should rather revise the Yorick chapter - though that would kill the cat. (Laurence Sterne himself - his skull - became part of a similar story, all which finally entered another novel, Malcolm Bradbury's last) (which I have not read, yet I trust Wikipedia in all its abysses of knowledge) (I hate reading the novels of authors who think scholars will provide the footnotes, which reminds me of two Salman Rushdie-footnotes, one in which Rushdie stated exactly that hope, and one that eventually provided the notes for his Satanic Verses). --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
    • We could create a Yorick (Sterne) or Parson Yorick or whatever (probably all reasonable names should redirect to one) with also a hat-note link from Yorick, but even though Hamlet's Yorick appears only as a skull, the lines about him are among the most famous and most quoted (and most mis-quoted) in Shakespeare, definitely deserving of an article considering the extent to which Wikipedia takes a "splitter" approach to topics. (I'm more of a "lumper". My own choice, but clearly against the style here, would be to redirect Yorick to an appropriate section of Hamlet.) - Jmabel | Talk 18:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Lots of work for tomorrow (all your notes). Yorick remains an intriguing fellow. There is (in the Sentimental Journey) this parson in need of a passport, he realises: the man who has to issue the document is reading Hamlet, and then says, "you know, Yorick, that's me" - and is amused as this persuades the Hamlet-reader to produce the document with the requested identity statement. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • With reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe, "as the author employed what readers perceived as real life characters and names in her fiction." Really? As I've always understood it, none but perhaps some semi-literate attendees of minstrel shows and the like would have taken the characters of the melodramatic Uncle Tom's Cabin for representations of real individuals. Do you have any evidence for this claim? Similarly, the claims made about Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky seem to me to be too strong. - Jmabel | Talk 23:24, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Ah, that was not what I wanted to say - I simply wanted to say that she turned the problem from politics and religion, party faction and so on into one of (indeed melodramatic) human dimensions. She created characters (agree with you: not in a work of realism...), but now, at least one could suffer with them (and if only mildly and full of kitsch sensations). The extraordinary thing is nonetheless that such a novel could move so much, be read so widely. (I confess, I got killed in between, do not know where, always thought: should unpack it in a seminar on 19t century bestsellers...) --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Your solution of "that had previously been discussed mainly in the abstract"
  • Mary Shelley's The Last Man: "a work that led to the catastrophic last days of a mankind extinguished by the plague". Not sure what you want to say here, but "led to" in a context like this usually means "caused", which clearly can't be right. -Jmabel | Talk 23:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
developed into? unfolded? The last third of the book leads us and the protagonists into an extreme disaster. (I realised, I use "lead" to often (and often confuse lead and led as they sound so similar). If you have a nice solution, some other word for a change, I'll be happy. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes ("whose plot culminated"), that's what I was looking for.
  • "The swift arrival of the new production rested on its institutional heritage". I'm not sure what this means. If you break it down grammatically, it has an "arrival" resting on a "heritage", a rather odd turn of phrase. Yes, I understand (from what follows) what heritage is referred to. But what does "The swift arrival of the new production" mean here? - Jmabel | Talk 04:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
That needs to be said clearer: All the groups involved were ready to promote the new topic of literature and to establish it since it arrived as a democratic and pluralistic topic. The debate of literature, the debate of the respublica literaria, was traditionally the only democratic, republican exchange available. The academic world had organised itself as a "republic of learned people", with a declaration of pluralism. Now that they changed the topic from the sciences to fiction and poetry who should speak against it? They remained the well respected organisers. The academic world pervaded all groups who could have resisted. Literature was not stopped in the West because it came with the support of pluralistic sciences. Things were not that easy outside Europe where they would not only have a problem with Western concepts of art but with the entire constitution of "free" and "democratic" sciences. Couple of recent books have pointed that out. I'll revise the entire passage tomorrow after work. (my real problem is the lack of a literature article or an article about the history of histories of literature. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I think the key here is to clarify "the new production". The word "production" is used far too much in the article. Does "The swift arrival of the new production" mean an increase in the number of novels written (the sense in which you have usually used "production") or the rise of what we would now call literary criticism? - Jmabel | Talk 23:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Nations and their most important literary critics protect them by praising them as great artists... Not sure how to say this, may be I'll add a sentence. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what to make of this: "Good works of art tend to be controversial—one had to take care that art was not defiled for political and social purposes, the artist was responsible for the entire sphere of art." There are essentially three opinionated statements in this sentence. Whose opinions are they? And doesn't the first, before the dash somewhat contradict the second? - Jmabel | Talk 03:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
They are all supposed to contradict each other - are different options how 19th-century critics of art and literature defined the new scandals of art and literature as scandals of responsibilities the authors should show (towards societies and their morals, or art). I'll think of a solution... --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
They (saying that they had but one responsibility towards art) became the most notorious since critics would doubt both: that they acted responsibly towards their social environment or towards art. Again, I was too short - that will need a better paragraph, you are right... --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Stepping from the lonely individual stuff to the intimate relations before moving to politics, future and fantasy. I just tried to somehow signal that the individual paragraphs are supposed to widen the scope - this paragraph is close to the last... Any solution is welcome - this is some kind of authorial, "reader that's where we are heading with the next paragraphs" thing, nothing more, I see I did not find a good solution. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
OK, I revised the entire opening section of the 19th century chapter - and hope I could improve it. Joined separate passages on canon-debate together and added sentences wherever you noted problems. Hope it helped. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "Compared with the 20th-century world-wide implementation of fiction as a field of free and public debates the 19th-century European and North American implementations found hardly any resistance." I don't get this. (1) "Implementation" seems a very odd word here. (2) I have no idea what "resistance" in the 20th century is being referred to. - Jmabel | Talk 05:25, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
All the European nations embraced the topic, created their new literatures, presented their far older ones and implemented the academic organisation behind literary life (school education in the national languages, university courses, production of histories of literature etc.). The 20th century saw the same development now on the global scale. Some countries could produce national literatures with long traditions (India, China...) others had to found traditions (Latin American countries and in a recent wave the postcolonial literatures of Africa). Again others esp. in the Islamic world remained cautious: Do they like western literary life? Do they like Western art? Do they like the secular system of sciences? I wanted to link this chapter to what is said further down and build up a contrast between 19th century Eurocentrism and the present scene of conflicts.--Olaf Simons (talk) 14:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • And what follows is equally confusing.

They created a competition among the modern nations. This is eventually also the achievement of the academic institutions that continue to provide, monitor and evaluate the new exchange. Literary life goes back to the intellectual life the early modern “republic of letters”, the “respublica literaria”, the early modern scientific community had generated on its own subject "literature", the sciences, since the 16th century.

    • Who does "they" refer to at the beginning of the first sentence?
    • Who does "this" refer to at the beginning of the second sentence?
    • "This is eventually also the achievement of..." is very odd, but I don't dare touch it without understanding the referent of "this".
    • "the intellectual life the early modern 'republic of letters'": perhaps "the intellectual life: the early modern 'republic of letters'" or "the intellectual life of the early modern 'republic of letters'" (assuming I follow correctly)? The current wording is ungrammatical. - Jmabel | Talk 05:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "The scientific organisation of the entire exchange…": I presume "scientific" here is intended as a translation of wissenschaftlich, but the problem is that in English it really has the more specific meaning of naturwissenschaftlich. And "academic" seems wrong here. I'm not sure what would be right, but I think "scientific" has a wrong connotation. - Jmabel | Talk 05:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "The developments did not lead to clear cut definitions, they stabilised the controversies over these definitions." I have little idea what this means. - Jmabel | Talk 05:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Hm. I'll try to say it clearer, yet don not know whether I'll manage. You are right with what you say on "wissenschaftlich" and "scientific". These words have different meanings in both languages. I feel somewhat at a loss here. What I want to say is: modern literary life has a tradition. Not in the works of Shakespeare and Defoe but in the exchange the respublica literaria, the early modern scientific community, first generated. They discussed the sciences though in a public debate of literature, the sciences. From the 1750s into the 1830s they rearranged their debates. The individual sciences would discuss their own works while the wide debate of literature would find a new topic with what we today read as "literary works": plays, poems, fiction. Why did the 19th-century nations adopt this new child? Basically because it came with the modern sciences. Its a kind of pluralistic exchange they adopted but one they can still hope to control as the financiers of universities and schools... Once one understands the role of modern literary life it is no longer that surprising that literary works accumulated such an interest in all topics in the course of the 19th century. "Wissenschaftlich" can mean part of the scientific exchange, part of the scientific community in German. "Eine wissenschaftliche Institution" - an institution that is part of the scientific community, feel handicapped here... "Wissenschaftsbetrieb" - is that academic life, academia? --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I would be inclined to say "academia", but, again, my German is not great, and I could easily be missing a connotation of the German word. I just know that the English "scientific" is too narrow for the meaning intended here. - Jmabel | Talk 17:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Academia/ academic might not be that bad. --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Good point here. (I once had the job to search the Bavarian state archives for the entire range of documents on literary life in Munich 1880-1990 - including all acts of censorship... these scientific works created problems) - yep, that should be modified. It is rather that fiction became the prominent platform on which one could stage the conflicts. The bans of Joyce's Ulysses, Lawrence's Lady Chatterly, and Miller's Tropic of Cancer created interesting cases of conflicting value systems: nations that protect the freedom of expression and that venerate art get into an intriguing situation if they censor such works. (They'll have to say, it is not art - but how can they?) Some of the 19th- and 20th-century landmark decisions were eventually not triggered by these works but by Fanny Hill, a work that challenged modern censors as a historical and cultural document (is it not their task to protect the cultural heritage?) Fanny Hill is outstanding as it reaches into our own culture without always producing a historical gap. Porno shops sell it in editions that look as if they were written yesterday whilst one can buy the same text as annotated Penguin Classic of world literature - censors can act against the first but what about the latter...) (always wanted to give a seminar on this topic [1]/[2]. Rephrase it (I liked your additions). --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "The paper based novel is still both a medium of openly declared publicity and a medium which almost creates privacy." Poorly worded. The general sense is clear from the words "publicity" and "privacy", but the sentence is otherwise muddy. Should be reworded. A minimal version would be "The novel remains both public and private," but I suspect you mean to convey more than that. - Jmabel | Talk 17:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I can live with your minimal version. What I wanted to say is that the novel somehow creates privacy. Sounds odd. But once you have these 500 page things you have people who look for a silent retreat to read them. Theatre, Film, songs, poetry read aloud, Newspapers which have to appear at the same news stands day after day, all these things are far more public than extended fiction. Yet your minimal version does the job... --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "a Western substitute for religion and education": not sure how the (academic) humanities constitute a "substitute for … education" - Jmabel | Talk 17:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Education, don't know how it got there, removed. Substitute is still strong because religion did not dissappear - religion did disappear in the secularised educational sector. Modern schools do much the same with literature what church schools had done with religious texts before. Don't quite know how much to say here. --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "South Asia and South America joined the production of world literature at the beginning of the 20th century." Do you mean to say "South America" or the broader "Latin America"? That is, do you deliberately mean to exclude Central America and Mexico? (Conversely, it would not be hard to come up with a pretty decent list of 19th century Latin American—including South American—literature, though it would mostly be verse.) - Jmabel | Talk 17:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Latin America would have been better, was not sensitive enough here. You are right: Latin American Literatures begin in the 19th-century. If you know an elegant differentiation, I'll like it. Was not careful enough here. --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "the attack of their theories can modify the very criteria of their views." Completely ambiguous preposition. Does this mean an attack upon or by their theories? Either way, even with the appropriate substitution, the phrase is no pinnacle of clarity. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes terrible. Better? --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, you read these novels and you realise: To some extent they are written for literary theorists who will explain them as new and avantgarde stuff. Others read them and make a show of their immense understanding of art and literature. If you feel like, take the shot, your's will be better than mine. --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
tried to improve that. --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Probably my own (painful) memories (had to write poststructuralist interpretations as a student). Agree: it started somewhere with Barthes and Foucauld in the late 1960s.
Let me see. --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • "…the interaction the new authors sought with the field of literary criticism…": certainly true of Joyce, and probably Beckett and Woolf, but Pynchon (for example) has rather rejected that. I'm not sure about now, but in the 1960s and 1970s, his contracts with his publishers stipulated that they could not publish both him and critical books about him. - Jmabel | Talk 01:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Which shows you an immense arwareness of the debate he would rather like to handle safely. I did not know that but if true it is a wonderful thing no author of fiction around 1600 or 1700 could have made sense of. I'll have to follow that hint, that's extremely beautiful... add it and modify the statement, I like it (and find a footnote for it that I can exploit...) (writing from a greasy Kasel Internet-Cafe) --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Another thing: Can you restrict the Richard Head article so that only users with an account can modify the page? It really goes on my nerves (especially if I am on vaccations) --Olaf Simons (talk) 16:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I'm done with my major pass through this. I hope everyone will agree that it is much improved. Still, I think: - The tone is still a bit too academic. - There is certainly some overlinking. - Some material is covered two or even three times. - There a bit of a bias toward the UK, Germany and the U.S. (roughly in that order) as against other countries and cultures that have produced novels, and doubtless there are some other similar imbalances. - It is undercited (though I believe basically accurate), and probably more opinionated than Wikipedia prefers these days. - I'm sure someone else could make other comparable criticisms I'm not immediately thinking of.

Which is to say it's not bad, but it is by no means close to Featured Article standards.

I may try some further edits, but I think I've completed my major editorial contributions. - Jmabel | Talk 03:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Fair criticism. Do not like my own bias. Repetitions - I will try to delete them (later). I'll need a bit of distance. Good thing: it is Wikiepedia after all, things can be changed and additions and revisions are welcome. Working with you has been interesting and inspiring, friction was and is most welcome. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Yup, it's been fun. Always good to edit someone who knows his (or her) stuff and is interested in working with someone else to express it better. - Jmabel | Talk 16:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
One more thing: I have changed the sequence of the chapters beginning the 18th century - as I did not like how the passage began with statistics to which I only refered at the end of the entire section. Part of the statistics had also occurred in a footnote, that's solved as well, content-wise a minor change but sentences had to be changed to get the new connections here and there, sorry for the inconvenience. Hope the line of argument has improved. --13:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Fixed that and several other infelicities.

You recently introduced a phrase "The Islamic republic eventually demonstrated the watershed." This makes no clear sense to me at all. Should be fixed, but I don't understand your intent well enough to propose a substitute. - Jmabel | Talk 23:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

not good, I see - all I wanted to make clear is that this was a bit of tit for tat: "you say you are free? We show you, that you are not. We simply have to step into a sphere where you are as sensitive as we are in matters of religion..." --Olaf Simons (talk) 08:34, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

last bits and pieces

  • "The new print market immediately relegated medieval histories to the realm of the trivial." I am not quite happy here with the agency the sentence creates with "relegate" and the "print market". The new medium rather created a second new market on which one could produce such histories at a lower price. It primarily created an addition of cheap books (with the surprising result that they killed the manuscript market). This is part of the beauty of the Melusine Image: they did not even consider that the old market would be dead in no time. The comparatively cheap printed book shows the rich customer ordering his precious manuscript history as if this would go on...) --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Feel free to try another way to say it, then. I tried to interpret what you had there before, which was clumsy and unclear; apparently it was sufficiently unclear that I didn't get it right. FWIW, "trivialised" is always a transitive verb, which is most of why your previous wording didn't work. - Jmabel | Talk 17:39, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
You are right I felt like I could say "the market trivialised" (like I feel I can say "it sunk and degenerated..."). Gave it a second try. --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The Church

The article as it stands emphasizes (for example) the increased availability of paper as a factor in allowing authors to write about more intimate topics, but it doesn't seem even to discuss a factor I would think was also very important: the fracturing of western Christendom and the growth of the power of cities. - Jmabel | Talk 18:24, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Hm. how would one prove such a statement? The medieval romance spread in southern France. The early modern romance and the early modern novella (stepping from Cervantes to the Scudéry) in Spain and then in France. Protestant England did not do much in this field before the 1680s. Scandinavia waited into the 19th century.
Western Christendom was indeed faster - and the countries of the Eastern orthodox churches did not develop the modern novel at all. Yet here I feel that has much to do with the immense advantage the upper classes gained in countries like Russia and Poland wherever they articulated themselves in French. Had they developed a national literature with Russian novels in the 16th century that would have made it attractive for all others to climb the latter. I feel they defended their status by defending their international orientation.
The novel - up into the 17th century it needed fashions of behavior and the courts of Madrid and Paris as their centres. Between 1650 and 1730 it needed the Dutch press and its international market - French authors used it to gain an audience they could not gain at home. It began to use the anonymity of the print market in bigger cities in the 1690s. You are right here. Part of the 700 page history of the early modern novel I wrote was filled with maps of cities to discuss the question of anonymity - gosh it would kill this article if we stepped into all these debates. It is already 40 pages in print. You tell me what to do, and we'll do it. --Olaf Simons (talk) 13:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me then that all we need to do is cite some authority on the importance of urbanization and anonymity. I'll take your work on the Church issue not being as clear as I thought. - Jmabel | Talk 16:10, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"Debate"

I increasingly come to think that the term "debate" is being used incorrectly in this article. It simply arises too often. In English, a "debate" is a more or less formal discussion in which typically (though it can be more) two conflicting propositions are formally presented and weighed. For example, one can refer to "the debate over whether the US military should stay in Iraq" or "the debate over Keynesianism" or even "the debate over whether the novel requires psychological realism" or (as we do here) the debate over whether On Chesil Beach is long enough to qualify as a novel, but (for example) "Reactions to novels were to be found within other novels, not in a public debate of literature" seems to me to be pushing it and "The pluralistic discourse created here eventually developed into the 17th- and 18th-century debate of fiction and its genres" seems to me a bit odd, and "The debate of the “novel” as the major alternative to the antiquated “romance” began with the publication of Cervantes Novelas Exemplares" even more so. - Jmabel | Talk 03:29, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Debate, Discussion, Discourse. What I am looking for is an unobtrusive word for the most normal thing you experience in modern publishing house (like Random House for whose branch in Munich I did some work a couple of years ago). If a new book comes out the marketing has to decide how to sell it. Is it the work of a bestseller author, then get his/her audience, promote him/her, arrange for contacts in bookshops. If it is something more refined, then think of the debates or discussions (both words are the same in German, debate is a bit more specific) it will arouse. This is a novel on child abuse? State that in your marketing, "it touches a hot topic", "it is going to stand in the centre of debates this autumn". Their representatives go from newspaper to newspaper, contact the critics, and tell them such things about the upcoming production. The critics want to know: which of these works has the potential to raise discussions. They should not fail to notice the importance of a new title.
The modern novel changed, it began to touch topics once it moved into this marketing scheme. The original novel was - far better than the rivaling romance - prepared for this development. Chaucer's pilgrims gave stories to be discussed. Congreve's "Incognita or Love and Duty reconciled" tells you what you can discuss here: an example how Love and Duty got reconciled. That's not quite as fascinating as "Pamela or Vertue Rewarded". Vertue should be rewarded in any case - so here it was not to be expected? and happened even though, against all odds?!
Use normal words for the normal practice. Public sphere is another word - we have Öffentlichkeit in German which is pretty unobtrusive, normal. I used public sphere, seeing that Habermas translated into English used the word - and I felt inclined to use a plural for different national public spheres - a plural I cannot build in German. Here again, I do not what it to sound extraordinary. Ideally it should sound in a way that a Random house sales person will say: yes, that's normal, he is telling the normal part of our reflection --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Controversies - if I have repeated debates and discussions too often...

The image File:1988 Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

  • That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
  • That this article is linked to from the image description page.

The following images also have this problem:

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --08:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Fair Use nightmare :/

Hi guys... I think that all or almost all of the covers of books and the like in this article will have to be removed per WP:FU. Otherwise, you will be getting a lot of canned bot messages like the one above. ;) —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 08:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, actually I was amazed myself. The Satanic Verses cover is a scan of my 1988 copy. I contributed it as I saw the present edition's cover in the The Satanic Verses article with a (hidden) note that they were looking for a scan of the original cover. So I thought, I could contribute that. In Germany Wikipedia this would be absolutely impossible. Uploading the file on the English site I realised that lots of present covers were already there and that the upload page even offered the option to state it's a cover (and supposedly all right). I eventually felt that there existed different policies in both projects. Commons seems to forbid such uploads, wiki.riteme.site seems to invite them. --Olaf Simons (talk) 13:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
The issue is that you need to fill out {{Non-free use rationale}} on the image page for each use in an article. - Jmabel | Talk 00:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Felt I did that - maybe you can take a look at them. The Fight Club cover does not have it and continues to exist, Brave New World had it and got into trouble. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Just realised: Part of the problem is that the reproduction is licensed for the article about the respective book but not for the novel article. Can I add the novel article (tried to do so, but the template did not accept this use...) --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Quite correct an article like this should only make use of images which are public-domain or have explicit permission from the copyright holder to use here in the image upload. Unfortunately this will probably mean most images from modern novels will have to go. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 13:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
You need a separate template for each article where the image will be used. - Jmabel | Talk 16:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
Question is: will it be allowed - according to the copyright policy to multiply these templates? For as far as I can see en.wikipedia has justified its permission to reproduce these title pages with the idea that they will only apper once in the respective article on the book. Images of authors are not a bad solution though. I can live with it, though I loved the idea of working with title pages and covers. "Leidenschaftslos" in this question. --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, that's the justification already given for the use in those articles. You'd need to provide a separate justification for use in this article (in a separate template). If the cover art is specifically discussed here (including in the caption) and is relevant to the topic of the article, then that justification exists. If not, then this use of copyrighted materials would be counter to policy. - Jmabel | Talk 23:11, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Serialization

One more thought: serialization deserves more of a mention. So many major novels were first published (and/or reached their largest audience) in serial form, and there is also a distinction to make between those that were plotted and written as the serialization went along and those where this was merely a method of publishing. - Jmabel | Talk 16:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Serialisation is an old phenomenon. The Amadis had it, Rabelais had it, Richard Head had it... sometimes it is the orginial author who provides the sequel sometimes others jump on the train. The 19th century developed the English three volume novel (which had its advantages as a production designed to reach the circulating libraries). The 20th-century trivial market developed the series as a further refinement of the genre. A series promises far clearer more of the same than the genre... I am not quite sure where to add these considerations. The series is, in any case, an attempt to create something like a market success. A bit of that is mentioned in the chapter on trivial literature at the end... --Olaf Simons (talk) 17:24, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't thinking so much of the multi-volume novel as the ones that came out originally in a magazine or newspaper and were only later published as books. - Jmabel | Talk 00:09, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
If I may butt in: quite by coincidence, I was reading about serialization a few months ago. You can find some sources about serialization at:
and citations therein, especially:
  • Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund, The Victorian Serial, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1991.
I definitely agree that serialization ought to be mentioned. Hope this is helpful, Shreevatsa (talk) 00:29, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Noël Coward? Shakespeare?

Why the picture of Noël Coward? To the best of my knowledge, he never wrote a novel. - Jmabel | Talk 18:20, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Similarly, Shakespeare. - Jmabel | Talk 18:23, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Note after looking in the history: it looks like a lot of what I'm objecting to here and in the next two sections is recent work by User:81.106.67.236. - Jmabel | Talk 18:39, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Layout

On my Firefox browser, the layout in the section Writing world history now looks like a mess. I can't work out what someone really meant to do here, but surely this can be done in a less tricky and more effective manner. - Jmabel | Talk 18:22, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Too many images of genre writers relative to literary writers

Jules Verne, H.G. Wells (insofar as he was a novelist), Arthur C. Clarke, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dan Brown? L. Frank Baum? Tolkien 'and C.S. Lewis? (Surely one would do.) And all of these, oddly in the Writing world history section? (H.G. Wells's historical works were not novels, and vice versa). And all of these with larger images than Joyce Carol Oates, Chinua Achebe, or Virginia Woolf? In contrast, no mention or image of Hemingway or of Toni Morrison. No image of James Joyce (though a bland one of a book jacket), F. Scott Fitzgerald or William Faulkner. What exactly is going on here? Surely the latter figure more prominently in the history of the novel. I believe the only German-language writer depicted is Elfriede Jelinek (deserving, but others are probably more so), no Slavic-language writers are depicted here at all (Conrad wrote in English), no Scandinavians, no Italians, no one who wrote in Spanish, and I believe the only French-language writer depicted is Jules Verne. Are there any criteria for whose pictures we are using here, where in the article, and how large? - Jmabel | Talk 18:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I just threw them out - the browser of the bloody internet cafee I am using in Kassel shows the same mess you seem to have encountered. Anyway: These info boxes belong into articles on authors. --Olaf Simons (talk) 09:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Chinese Novels and other literatures

The following claim is made. "A number of literatures could challenge the West with traditions of their own: Chinese novels are older than any comparable Western works" in the section titled: The novel and the global market of texts: 20th- and 21st-century developments

Please give examples like Four Great Classical Novels and other novels of other literatures. I would do this but I really know little of novels outside of trivial genres. Anonymouslyfornow (talk) 06:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

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