Thomas Pavel, "The History of the Novel"

thank you for coming I hope if you don't like it just leave during the but please don't slam the door okay okay thank you okay so this is a a presentation of my uh can you hear me because it's secret okay should I speak louder okay so thank you for coming thank you for coming to this presentation of a kind of my reflections on the history of the novel the novel being for us at this point probably the most not I don't know if I can say the most important literary genre but the literary genre with which we are most in in in touch in our in our time so I started to teach the history of the novel more than 20 years ago not a very early in my life but still at some point when I was asked to teach on the on the universe on the East Coast or where I was before being here at Chicago I was asked to teach the history of the novel and I adopted the most the most common approach and began decided to begin with Don Quixote by Cervantes Don Quixote which is the story as everybody knows of some a nobleman not very wealthy in late 16th century Spain who read lots and lots of chivalric novels and he wanted to be a true heroic knight in a country which really didn't need this because they had their own police it was very well organized he went for adventure than each adventure ended very badly it was almost like in a Chaplin movie he was beaten up and suffered every of this so this was but many people consider this to be the first modern novel because this novel said no - older heroic chivalric novels and I realize also that national pride in Europe being what it was and still is each nation claimed to have its own first modern novel so in Spain and also in other Don Quixote but if you move a little bit north to to France you are told that la francaise declare the princess of clever madame de Lafayette is the first modern novel a little bit later in the 18th in the 17th century in England the first modern novel used to be considered Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe 18th century and in Russia the first modern novels are obviously those written by Russian authors Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky they are before that it was not so good and I started I'd I but then you know at some point teaching starting with Don Quixote I was interested to read the novel's donkey a donkey Hotel read and all day chavalla the the medieval Knights he imitated and this is when I read a modest the gala which was the favorite novel of Don Quixote who imitated a modest a novel consider come as him being completely completely out of fashion is the old kind of novels has nothing to do with us and if I acknowledge in a book that I justify it was just published a few weeks ago the life of the novel a history ok by Princeton University Press as I said there I loved it I loved it it is this Knight is very strong and valiant knight who has various missions people come to him to tell him that there is this in this castle there are the things that happen against justice and he runs through the medieval forest to the castle and fights for justice and wins at every single episode and the episode that are not so well connected with each other there is no general movement of the action there is just this Amadas who fights for justice as we establishes justice every time so you know I sort of realized that this is what we see on TV when we watch as people my age used to watch Hawaii off I've the old room where you are LAPD without any kind of long-term plot each time these people save justice okay so maybe it's not maybe I thought it's not so bad it's not so completely out of fashion in these older novels and after reading a madhi's dagawa I read the oldest one of the older such novels II called the Ethiopian storied Ethiopian story by Helia doors by heliodoro so the Ethiopian we don't know much about anything about heliodoro except that he'll probably was one of these he lived in one of these Greek colonies on the eastern part of the Mediterranean and the novel is probably written in the second between the second and the fourth century at some point and I must say that this was one of the revelations of my lifetime it will it is so beautiful it is so convincing and then I understood I think at that point I understood how the novel evolves through centuries this is here Dorothy second story is the it is the story of two young lovers three young people a man and a woman who meet at the Delphi festival at some point they are she believes that she's Greek her name is Kara clayey and he is Greek he comes from a family of Achilles okay so and they meet there and there is a love at first sight they are deeply in love with each other in a Egyptian priest who happens to be around color series protects them and helps them run away together because her family wants to marry wants her to marry a wealthy Greek merchant and they in order to run away she requires him to take an oath of chastity which he is a bit offended that she suspects him of being unchaste so he takes the the oath and they run away and they will cross the Mediterranean and meet one adversity and one ordeal after the other they are kidnapped by pirates they are the zillions of things happen to them and always their strength inner strength chastity and a kind of a secret alliance that you read are realized at the end a secret alliance with Providence helps them little by little reach Ethiopia and once in Ethiopia it turns out that the Greek sorry the Egyptian priest who was protecting them knew her secret namely that she was the daughter of the king and queen of Ethiopia so the they arrived there and they in Indian they they they marry but not before the her mother recognized them the father accepts accepts her I will tell you exactly why she she could not live in if you're trained in a second but not before the the King under the pressure of the people who are around and see all this events at a festival in Ethiopia and change is the law because in Ethiopia there was a law a legendary law that every foreigner has to be killed if you if you it was an immigration kind of very very very it is that exact very serious and the the King under put a listens to the - to the people and changes this law and foreigners will further then on consider as equal human beings and allowed to live to live there it is an extraordinary beautiful novel which was not so successful in in the in the ancient times it was not so successful because people still read The Iliad The Odyssey the Greek tragedies and this the language is not necessarily the most elegant and it's something that you don't notice if you are lucky enough to read it in translation some of the people I know here realize the fear they go about proust who in English is much easier than in French okay but don't betray me don't tell anybody I said that so it was it was a little bit forgotten it was read in the Byzantine Empire but it was rediscovered in Western Europe only at the beginning of the 16th in the mid 16th century translated into all European languages French Manesh Italian German English everybody read this Ethiopian story by Helio dollars including Cervantes including Cervantes and there was a debate I'll draw the debate started in fact by the French preface the French preface of the translation done by Jacques am you a great translator Plutarch's translator into into French and who in these preferences finally a kind of novel that speaks about reality okay not like this medieval chivalric novels that are about sorcerers and sorceress trees and magic horses and and unbelievable things and when you read the Ethiopian story he adds you believe you realize that perhaps this older chivalric stories were written by somebody who had a kind of a sickness in his brain yeah I don't have that anyway I have the word here by that matter this is the idea sickness in his brain and this preface was translated into Spanish because the Spanish translation comes from the French translation not directly from from Greek and this is something that everybody everybody was debating who is the winner the medieval stories or the Ethiopian story back to Cervantes I realize reading all this I realized that in fact Cervantes is latest novel written after Don Quixote and published the year after his death because he finished it at the last moment he was already sick and in the last chapters I returned in a in a in a hurry is a novel that I happen to have read but I didn't realize the importance it was called Perseus and see his Munda merciless see hizmet is not well-known and it's not necessarily the best novel by by by Cervantes but Cervantes believed sincerely and he says it in the preface that this is his claim to immortality because it is a imitation of the Ethiopian story by Helio Doris and a bit Christianized because these people instead of reaching Ethiopia they reach Rome and it's safer okay they don't cross okay and they are instead of being blessed by the king and queen of Ethiopia they are blessed by the Pope at the end at the very end so and then I started to think about the following Cervantes clearly agreed that this is the true model and he clearly agreed that the medieval chivalric novels are not what we should continue and so he had a project in two steps I would say first make fun of the older novels of the chivalric novels this is Don Quixote he makes fun of is there no good make fun of a modest make fun of this sort of out of fashion ideals of the chivalric novel and then assert the new true model the Elia Doris model in Perseus so what about there is no such a thing is necessarily the first modern novel what about seeing the evolution of the novel is a long continuity and what about not necessarily thinking that everybody everybody over centuries looked for realism more and closer and closer to reality a new believed that the older novels they the helio Doris type of novels are more real than the medieval ones but are they so real they are not real at all is just is just a example what is so beautiful in in heliodoro sees it the Ethiopian story is precisely the way it idealized this human being without idealized human being they are incredibly strong they are incredibly devoted to each other in a in a faithful and absolutely chaste way and they they are have a secret alliance with the Providence that incredibly protects them all the way from Greece to Ethiopia and it also represents a world in which the borders between nations did not fully count anymore because she was born in Ethiopia raised up in in in Greece and she does each Greek if she is European it was the the world of the Roman Empire we unified the whole Mediterranean and the what counted was just that people were individuals and they are in a way in a way this couple this couple is in a way a couple outside the world it crosses the world reaching for a legendary a legendary country Ethiopia okay without completely knowing this and so I sort of realized yet another thing for a long time we were told that the the novel is the modern epoch is the epoch of the bourgeois society this is what Hegel said Hegel was a great philosopher who read three or four novels in his lifetime I mean it's better than nothing infinitely better than zero okay but I don't think that he was interested he was not a literary historian he had a very very interesting general made general point but on this one he was not right because the epic the ancient epic is about heroes who are deeply deeply bound to their tribe and their city and they fight these wars for their tribe or for their city while these two people these two Carrie Clara and Thea Jonas did the main character in inheritors story they cross the world they are not fighting for their own tribe or city they she does not have really her own tribe or or city they represent something else is the discovery of the of of individuals who are not completely completely bound to a place in this world so the the novel has its own autonomous independent long long history and it is a initially it is a idealist genre which idealizes human being and the way the ancient novel rather a few other ancient novels the idealized human beings there are also the medieval novel does the same thing the authors of the who wrote these stories about Eva or about Tristan or about the the nights around King Arthur they were also idealizing their car so there is a long tradition of idealizing human beings right but it could not possibly be the only one and I realized that a parallel to this idealizing tradition there is also a another tradition which makes fun of human beings and sort of is a derogatory tradition which is human beings are so terribly imperfect they are so bad okay they cannot do anything properly or they are they are really evil and then you immediately think of a an ancient Latin novel Satyricon by Petronius I I cannot because there are young people here I cannot tell you the story okay you should not read it but the the main characters are just lost they don't know what they are doing they are completely imperfect there in the Middle Ages at the same time as the most beautiful and the most the most noble chivalric novels at the same time an author who prefer to remain anonymous and I know why wrote the story of Renard Renard the Fox which has been translated in many languages and very much moderated because if you read the original it is so-called stickety so the erener is really a complete anarchist he's a complete in no no David no no listen it's not right because he's a nobleman who is keeping his his privileges but he is so with he has such pleasure in doing exactly what should not be done okay and the this this peril tradition is always alive a great a great French author hardly hardly belongs to this tradition his character panache Pannu's is somebody very very bad he's a terrible misogynist okay but however people laugh he will live because he is at the same time funny evil and he sort of flatters in each of us the desire that I hope most of us know how to master of being bad in the language is very funny so this is a long long long tradition and towards the at the same time a little bit earlier than Cervantes a little bit earlier today some Spanish author the first of being anonymous we don't know who he was started to take this tendency of being being always dishonest and doing exactly what you should not do to take it a little bit more seriously and instead of making just funny character that they do stupid things that in order to make us laugh they started to reflect on the seriousness of this situation and this is the beginning of what people call the picaresque novels the pickles being just these people who are usually very poor they come from a completely under privileged background and they need to survive they need to survive and they survive by lying stealing being dishonest and every agree ended in one episode after the other they still they are caught they lie they are caught they earn lots of money by cheating at cards and they will immediately lose their money okay okay I'm not here so no solid a so these characters can can be of two kinds some of them are just dishonest in more immoral they don't even realize that they are immoral they are doing naively without having any kind of moral consciousness and the the first example is la sorry audit or mesh again anonymous because it meant it was a gesture of courage just to describe such a character okay and then a little bit later the there is another kind of Picaro a Picaro that does lots of bad things just like the amoral picaros but he writes much later his memoirs and after each misdeed you describe let's say in two or three pages you have the right of another two or three pages of a sermon in which he says look how bad how bad I was I did not take into account is are the preaching picaros the preaching bigger and little by little this this parallel genre is parallel a sort of anti idealist or more realist if you want as opposed to the idea izing line these they start to singles about women women they have peak eras who do various lot of things and differ Daniel Defoe in Moll Flanders in more Flanders he just continues this genre and presents us this great character Moll Flanders who is one of this moralizing pucara she is a woman in a society in which it was very very difficult I would say impossible for women to be independent so she she just wants to have a good that's the only thing she's not a modern type of feminist but she understands the situation of women in her society and she understand that she cannot find a good hard way she finds one I don't want to tell those of you who didn't read the story you have to read it because it's one of the best earlier English novels and finally finally she after a life of how to put it after a life which is not very moral she at the end understands understands what morality means and she converts and she will lead a happy life in Virginia yes yeah because she is exiled she was condemned to death by hanging for having stolen something you know but in England was super tough in the 18th century whatever you did death penalty stealing death penalty killing 15 people death penalty her so but because of her very sincere remorse because she understands that the man he loved was suffering also because of one of her misdeeds they both convert and they convinced the the pastor of the prison and their pain is commuted to exile and they are happy they make lots of money in in in Virginia ok another interesting novel by by even even stronger by by Daniel Defoe which is less known also is very interest is Roxana it is Roxana the story of a woman who is also completely aware of the situation of women who depended entirely on marriage and on their husband so she marries a fool as she says and she is very unhappy and she decides to live alone she deserve to live alone and she she is she becomes a Curtis okay and she is fighting for for her independence but it so happens that no I won't tell you okay so what I wanted to say that they were identified at least these two major these two major lines and idealizing line and a counter eye or a derogatory line a satirical line a line which emphasizes the human human imperfection also looking a little bit of the situation around Cervantes I heard there were other genres and that until late until the 18th century people who wanted to read a novel had to choose between not just only between these two very well-defined subgenres but there were other subgenres very well defined it's just as we go let's say to a bookstore we go to a bookstore and we see you know mysteries or fiction or philosophy and we know exactly what we will find there these the people in the 16th 17th century they knew exactly what they were buying they were buying one of these Hilliard daughters like novels and there were many many of them some of them huge thousands of pages ok they were buying a picaresque novel completely different thing they are buying a pastoral novel the pastoral being a genre in between with this they took place in an Arcadian space a happy a happy space where people Dadaji discover property and they were not yet jealous of each other they were and the only thing they were doing they were taking care of their sheep and singing about their love they are thinking aloud or talking aloud about their love and there was always always somebody hidden not far from that and listening and discovering their secrets okay an important John in Cervantes out a beautiful pastoral Galatea Galatea and a more dramatic Jean got all these genres had as I said an episodic structure like the TV series in each episode a Shivalik a knight did a great deal in each episode the lovers in halyard orders or the imitations of Hiller daughters were stronger than yet another adversity in each picaresque novel the Picaro or epic era does place another trick okay and they were on the contrary some stories which emphasized the unity of action and they were much shorter they're much shorter and the instead of emphasizing a chain a chain of events all of them underlined the same idea over and over again justice nobility or on the on the other hand dishonesty trick story and so on they each of them made one important point one important point this journey this other sub-genre is the novella the novella and it was developed in Italy by great writers like Boccaccio Boccaccio who wrote the Cameron this less known Mandela Cinzia we know about these stories because many of them having the unity of action were adapted by playwrights and for instance Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare takes a story from Mandela Oh teller comes from Cinzia we were just ideal for for dramas precisely because of their shortness the unity of action and emphasis on one catastrophe or one comic situations in in some of Boccaccio's stories and here comes in the 18th century a very very smart Englishman who was in fact a businessman he was he had a printing shop and he was into printing and he was publishing successful books you know at that time I don't know if you ever had this kind of stuff when I was young we still had this manual of Correspondence how to write letters for various occasions for for you know thanking for being invited of condolences he was publishing also this kind of in he was writing them himself this kind of handbook how to write letters in various situations his name was Sam well and family named Richardson summer Richardson and this businessman said I will write also a novel I write a novel and just a little bit as you know this kind of machines include everything you need in one little machine on the same principle he included something from every single separate genre into one novel and this novel is not so bad I think is not the most perfect novel but it is very very important for this kind of craftsmen's innovation ok it's Pamela by Richardson Pamela by Richardson later he wrote probably the best novel of the 18th century Clarissa by Barrett an extraordinary novel but let's talk a little bit about Pamela Pamela is one of these ideal characters she is a completely completely strong and chaste young woman but instead of being a European princess we who lives far away in another era she is a little bit more plausible because she is lived in England in the countryside and she also is of a modest origin which adds a new moral dimension the moral equality between people of a humble extraction and the nobility and this family is also even she's more lonely more lonely than Cara Clara and Thea Janis in here Doris they were at least a couple that supported each other she is completely lonely because she has to resist the man with in love with her with her master mr. be a corrupt master who tries constantly who who once sorry to say this in contemporary once the sleep with her that's all all he want and she is a virtuous young young woman she writes constantly letters to her parents explaining what's going on the letters never leave the house of her master because he cannot possibly send them and that's very important you will see why and the master tried various things even tries to rape her but for some reason he's also he'd really have completely corrupt person because he does he's shy at the last minute in this rape scene you see something which is both a little bit coming but also moving it's a moving moment it's a movie and little bit in he so mad at her that she decides to find out what she is doing in his little roommate she's constantly writing and he's reading he reads her her letters and reading her letters he understand it his servant is not only nice pretty and so on but she is also morally superior to him and he slowly starts to understand that his behavior is not the right one and in the end he asked her to marry him and you realize that she also was not completely indifferent to her master and they marry and they will be forever happy so what we have here is a mixture you have the idealist novel perfect virtuous woman we have something for the picaresque a woman of a humble extraction who doesn't have any kind of money or anything but instead of behaving badly she will behave in a virtuous way so there is a little bit of the picaresque here there is from the novella from the novella there is a unity of action because there is just one thing that happens and there is a clear line okay going towards the the resolution and also you have the pastoral because some of this hesitation about love come from the he sells in one in one novel what his public his readers would have needed to buy five novels or books in order to it was one of the greatest success ever in he also wrote a comprehensible English right away right away the opposite side the people who want to make fun of us human beings and show that we are not perfect reacted and this is the Henry Fielding Henry Fielding immediately wrote a little parody which like Pamela is an epistolary novel which is called chamalla and it has exactly the same story except that Shamala had various adventure affairs in her life before becoming his servant and she decides to seduce her master pretending to be very virtuous and everything and her master is also he makes fun of that scene I mention about his method is completely under six and she she sort of despises him for that and manages in the end to I don't remember anyway doesn't matter you read it I must say that - okay so Harry fielding after parting this operation is short anti idealistic parody right a longer one a longer one Joseph Andrews Pamela's family name is Andres Pamela Andrews and Henry Fielding gives her a brother Joseph Andrews with just as virtuous as she is he is a servant of a lady who is a widow and the lady is very interested in Joseph but Joseph is very virtuous always and just rejects her exactly how the way in which Pamela rejects her her master and did and the novel continues as an imitation of Don Quixote and for the first time somebody sees Cervantes is a big is the author of a first important model Fielding is the author a finding is the source of this idea the Cervantes is the origin of the novel and fielding says in the preface of the objective and read the novel should not be very idealistic to imagine all these romantic adventures with a perfect being that are completely implausible the novel should be comic the essence of the novel is to be the comic epic as he calls it okay Richardson writes Clarissa it's a fifteen hundred pages in a big penguin very very slow but if people who have the strength to go through the whole thing and the are rewarded because it is and at that point at that point fielding understood that he was not fair he had not been fair towards rich Richardson and they became friends they became friends he understood also the other possibility but his own literature his own novels Tom Jones for instance continued to have a kind of a skeptical ironic attitude towards towards human toward human being towards their the way you realized all these people thought about something very very important the relationship between us human beings individual human beings and the moral ideals we have morality this is obvious that we have more ideas do we follow them sometimes the the idealized characters follow them all the time the other cat the picaros never follow them so the main issue is this tense relationship between us and what we ought to do but don't always video meliora provoke that I see the best and I approve it but sometimes I follow the worst okay so this tension is the four had been for a long time they what give gave life to the novel and I must say it continues it continues in the nineteenth century because suddenly you know certainly up a ancient princess with authority verges and travels through storms and pirates from from Greece to to to Ethiopia is not entirely plausible but this incredibly virtuous Pamela is not completely plausible either as fielding showed in family why is she so virtuous he's a virtuous because she has a Methodist background as critics later later pointed out that it is not something that Richardson at all you you just understand it if you are at 20th or 21st century critic why why is why human greatness is there why do we find people who are extraordinarily virtuous and powerful why other why what are the roots of greatness they are historical roots and that's the 19th century answer people like Walter Scott for instance starts to think about human greatness about this ideal characters in relationship with the historical and cultural environment the big discovery I don't know if you if you like Walter Scott if you ever happen to read the heart of midlothian by we let people read it nowadays it was a very very popular novel at the beginning of the nineteenth century you know you have this kind of incredibly strong character Jennie Dean's who is capable is uncapable to lie under oath her sister is accused of child murder although it's clear that she did not she had an illegitimate child that disappear but she did not kill the child and her sister would be condemned to death because nobody can testify under oath in her favor including her sister who believes that her this unfortunate young woman who is innocent but she cannot say it under oath because she was raised in a very very very strict Scottish Protestant environment so a young woman who cannot possibly lie under oath has the courage to alone alone go from Edinburgh to London without money having very very the money and going finally through a protector of the Scottish people at the court of Queen and goes to the Queen explains to the Queen the whole situation and the Queen will pardon her sister the suddenly you have this kind of incredible incredible strengthen but it is historically explained we know why when the culture her background her family background explains why she behaves this way and this is a lesson that will Walter Scott is very interested in in a variety of historical horizons he has all these historical novels including Ivanhoe and in which he shows strength and heroism pointing out to its historical motivation okay and this is something that will be inherited by the French great novelist Balzac who sees in wonder Scott the interest for the social historical and cultural milieu but Balzac instead of applying it to history applies it to his society to the French society of the beginning of the nineteenth century and he will write a huge cycle of novels that he calls the human comedy alluding to Dante's the Divine Comedy and in this human comedy you will find virtually every profession every kind of human behavior every kind of sexual interest every he is interested in everything very very interesting and he is an author who also wants to explain to you what happens and there are dramas there are ideal characters there are lesser there are bad characters there is always interaction and suddenly he says you hitted voici pourquoi and listen why listen why and we'll have five or six pages of historical social explanations culture explanation of what happens he's very well aware of that so I would say that in the 19th century this tension between the idealism and a counter idealism of if you want to call it realism continues and you have in English literature you will have somebody like Dickens can you believe Oliver Twist you would like to can you believe the Old Curiosity Shop the novel that everybody despised all the modernity spider is so sentimental and I myself did not read it until late is one of the novels I could not read without crying okay I'm not ashamed of that it's sentimental this is why I love it okay so be I always tell my student don't be afraid of people who call various novels kitsch don't be a kitschy that term meant to terrorize you just believe your heart the doesn't mean that the modernist novels are not as good as an interesting absolutely but there is a polemic there so I will stop here and conclude first of all the history of the novel is a history of polemics of polemics of tension of debates between the ideals and the imperfection and it always about the human struggle to truly inhabit this world following these ideals or negating them and this story is not completely solved yet but what is important that that will be my last statement here what is so important in the 19th 20th century is a separation at some point a separation in our in the democratic societies in the societies in which people can virtually all read they have access to literacy they have enough money to buy a there is a separation between a high literature which becomes sort of higher and higher and it's for the connoisseur only in a more popular literature a literature which is for the great numbers and I think that Victor Balzac Victoria go Dickens were the last writers who try to write for both publics but at some point you'll have writers who want to write just for those who really worship art and they will be writers who write for those who just want some excitement some action and so on and and I would say it's wonderful to love Ulysses by Joyce but there is nothing wrong in watching 15 or 25 times the Lord of the Rings

Channel: UChicago Division of the Humanities

Views: 38,371

Rating: 4.9299269 out of 5

Keywords: University of Chicago, Thomas Pavel, Humanities Day, Humanities (Field Of Study), History of the Novel, Novel (Literary School Or Movement)

Id: xEiHOhEhvMo

Length: 50min 37sec (3037 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2014