So the time to read all those moldy old novels has finally come.
I’ve got twenty-five or so lined up from the late middle-ages through the 18th century.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries will come later, if all goes well.
Here’s my preliminary syllabus, subject to change of course.
Ought to keep me busy for a while.
Evolution of the Novel, Part One (Precursors and Early Days):
Petronius: Satyricon, 1st century
Various Authors: Medieval Romances, 12th-15th centuries
Thomas Malory: Le Morte D’Arthur, 15th century
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1532
Anonymous: Lazarillo de Tormes, 1554
Erasmus: In Praise of Folly, 1509
Thomas More: Utopia, 1516
Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote, 1605 and The Deceitful Marriage and Other Exemplary Novels, 1610s
Madame de La Fayette: The Princess of Cléves, 1678
John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678
Aphra Behn: Oroonoko, 1688
Evolution of the Novel, Part Two (The Eighteenth Century):
Anonymous: The Arabian Nights, first published in Europe in 1704
Jonathan Swift: A Tale of a Tub, etc., 1704 and Gulliver’s Travels, 1726
Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders, 1722
Voltaire: Zadig, 1747 and Candide, etc., 1759
Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews, 1742 and Tom Jones, 1749
Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy, 1760
Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766
Tobias Smollet: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, 1771
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774
Marquis de Sade: Justine, 1778
Choderlos de Laclos: Les Liasons Dangereuses, 1781
4 Comments
June 15, 2007 at 5:41 am
I have a dream–and have had it for awhile–that I’m retired from a long and successful career as a writer and I’ve finally been able to lay down my pen and catch up on all the reading I never had time to squeeze in. Some of the books you mention are stacked beside a big easy chair and I go through them one by one.
Then I wake up and realize that if I don’t hammer out another draft of my latest piece, I won’t get any sleep that night.
This is the writer’s so-called life…
Thanks for this post, it made me envious as hell.
June 15, 2007 at 9:50 am
Readers and writers…it takes two to tango. Here’s hoping your dream comes true. Thanks for your comment.
July 9, 2007 at 11:50 pm
So how is it going? I’ve read only 4 of those (Gulliver, Candide, Werther, Liaisons), got defeated on 2 (Don Quixote, Morte d’Arthur) may attempt one day 2 or 3 from the rest (Satyricon, Moll Flanders, and – but I rather doubt – G&P). I really liked Liaisons, I wonder what I would think of it now.
July 10, 2007 at 7:32 am
Thanks for commenting, m.
I finished Satyricon. It was alright. Plenty amusing in parts, but too fragmented (alas) and some of the poetic parts grew tiresome.
I’ll try to write it up a bit more later.
Bonus: finding out who the original Trimalchio was (i.e. not “the Trimalchio of West Egg.”)