History and the Early English Novel

Description

This new study of the origins of the English novel argues that the novel emerged from historical writing. Examining historical writers and forms frequently neglected by earlier scholars, Robert Mayer shows that in the seventeenth century historical discourse embraced not only "history" in its modern sense, but also fiction, polemic, gossip, and marvels. Mayer thus explains why Defoe's narratives were initially read as history. It is the acceptance of the claims to historicity, the study argues, that differentiates Defoes fictions from those of writers like Thomas Deloney and Aphra Behn, important writers who nevertheless have figured less prominently than Defoe in discussions of the novel. Mayer ends by exploring the theoretical implications of the history-fiction connection. His study makes an important contribution to the continuing debate about the emergence of what we now call the novel in Britain in the eighteenth century.

First Sentence

In 1659 Peter Heylyn, an Anglican divine and well-known historian, launched an attack on Thomas Fuller's Church-History of Britain that occupied the better part of two books by Heylyn and elicited a lengthy reply by Fuller in his own defense.

Subjects

Other Editions

• History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought)PaperbackCambridge University Press2004-07-29
• History and the early English novelCambridge University Press1997-01-01
• History and the Early English NovelCambridge University Press1997-01-01
• History and the Early English NovelCambridge University Press2009-01-01
• History and the Early English NovelCambridge University Press2011-01-01