Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/778

* NOVEL. 662 NOVEL. a well-constructed romance: the matter was too heterogeneous for that. But it was a fiction "pleasant to read" and "written for our doc- trine." Of especial interest, too, are Reynard the Fox ( 14S1 ), the Four Sons uf Aymon ( 1489), and liUinchardin and Eglantine (14S9). The great labors of Caxton in translating, editing, and printing were continued by his noble follow- ers in the sixteenth century. Perhaps the finest work done by or for them was Hnon of liurdeux, a half-fairy tale translated by Lord Bcrners out of the French. To this time belongs also the Utopia (c.1515), by Sir Thomas ilore. A full list of the romances issued by the English press before 15.)0 would be a revelation as to the spread of the taste for reading marvelous tales. Hut the redactors employed by the printers in compiling bulky volumes lest sight of plot. The Moric d'ArtlLur is a series of biographies loosely couneeted with the career of King Arthur. Be- fore there could be a novel, chaos had to be reduced to order. That service was performed after a fashion by Spain. Amadis of Caul (q.v.), with its typical Greek story of the separation and the final union of the hero and heroine, thus becomes the first prose romance of chivalry. The pastoral, partly in verse and partly in prose, which had assumed a tenuous form in the Italian Aracadia (1504), by .Jacopo Sannazaro, was developed by the Spaniard llon- teniayor in his Diana (1560). Still further, an unknown Spaniard transformed the tricks of media'val tales into the short novel of manners. A merry scamp is put behind the scenes and per- mitted to relate what he sees there. The earliest of these so-called picaresque, or rogue, stories is LazariUo dc Tornics (1554). It was followed by a host of others' from which we rightly date the l)eginnings of the modern realistic novel. But tho glory of Spain is Don Quixote (q.v,). To out- ward appearances merely a burlesque of the ro- mances of chivalry, it also contains a careful delineation of maimers and two cliaractcr-types — Don Quixote and Sancho Panza — who, as has been said again and again, are a summary of human nature. To the Elizabethans, everything of importance that had been done in fiction aliroad «is well known. And yet in this age of the drama there was no very marked advance in the art of fiction. Sidney's Arcadia (1590) is an attempt to unite the pastoral and the romance of chivalry, and to give them the structure of the .Flhiojiicu of Heliodorus. The pastoral as written by Greene, Lodge, and many others, was the old romance of adventure reduced to prose and put in a new setting. What its possibilities were, had it been cultivated by a great literary artist, we may imagine from Shakespeare's .Is You Like It, founded on Lodge's Uusalijndc. The most popular Elizabethan ficdon was Lyly's Fuphues (1579), a romance of high life. For the enchantments of the romance of chivalry, Lyly substituted a wondrous natural history, which he derived from beast-books or made up as ho went along. As n realist great powers were displayed by Thomas Nash in his ill-constructed Unforhinnle Trarrllcr, or Jack Wilt on (1594), Indeed, Xash anticipates the manner of Defoe. Puritanism was a check to the imagination. From Elizabeth to the Restoration, the only notable fiction is the Argcnis, by John Barclay, composed in Latin (1621) and soon translated into French and English. Mainly a political romance framed to the Greek story of adventure, it is significant as an attempt also at history. It seems to be an important link between an- tiquity and the French rontan dc longuc luileine cultivated by Gomberville, La Calpreufede, and !Mlle. Scudfry. Of this tyi)e the best e.vaniphs are Scudei-y's (Jrand Cyrus and CIclie, each in ten octavo volumes. The extravagances of .Scudery were turned to finer issues by Jladamc de la Fayette in the Princesse de Cicrcs (1678), often regarded, because of its sane analysis of passion, as the first French novel. To this period belongs also a famous pastoral, the Astrce, by Honorfi d'Urfe (1610-27), which was burlesqued by Charles Sorel in the Bergcr extraragant (1027). There were, moreover, many realistic novels, as Sorel's Francion (1622), Scarron's Rowan co- micjue (1651-57), and Fureti&re's Roman bour- geois (1666), Akin to the Spanish ]>icaresque novel, they all give a humorous description of middle and low-class life. After the Kestoration. novel-writing was re- sumed in England. French romance was imi- tated; and a long series of low adventures was put together by Richard Head under the title The English Rogue (first part 1065). Of more interest is Oroonoko (1606; written much earlier), by Mrs. Aphra Belin (q.v.). In this short novel, founded on real events, there is some attempt at local color. But of all writers of this time John Bunyan (q.v.) did most for fiction. Bunyan spoke from the heart. And, however impossible might be the tale he undertook to tell, he knew how to .add the minute details that make fiction seem truth. Biinyan's successor was Daniel Defoe (q.v.). In narrative power Defoe was Homeric. His style is all movement; even description is turned into narrative. Be- cause of its style, its interesting incidents so ti-eated as to give the illusion of reality, and its ethical import, Robinson Crusoe (1719) is rightly regarded as the first worthy treatment of adventure. It has been asserted that Defoe was forestalled by Grimmelshausen's Sitni>licis- simus (about 1669), This German story of ailventure, however, belongs to the nld order. In France, Lesage had already published the first part of Oil Bias (1715). in which the picaresque novel was used as a vehicle of large satire on contemporary manners. Defoe took advantage of the immediate popularity of Robinson Crusoe. The succeeding novels possess all the qualities of the first except interesting subject matter. In Gulliver's Tracels (1726), Swift at once gave the satirical romance its perfect finish. The Reausts. After Defoe and Lesage, the novel was in danger of becoming plotless. It was Richardson who made the novel dramatic. Pamela (1740) is an expansion of the current bourgeois comedy such as Steele wrote. Clarissa Uarlou'c (1747-48) is an expansion of bourgeois tragedy sueh as Otway wrote. Hir Charles Urandison (1753) is likewise a comedy with its scene shifted to high life. Richardson's drama is not thus merely formal. He creates cliaraeter- tyjies, and he develops them in act and conversa- tion before the mind's eye. Fielding, with his experience as a playwright, was able to improve upon Richardson's clum.sy epistolary method. Joseph Andreics (1742) contains the matter of i