An Exemplary History of the Novel: the Quixote vs. the Picaresque

FAIN: FT-13142-76

Walter L. Reed
Emory University (Atlanta, GA 30322-1018)

To read earlier fiction, Greek romances, Roman prose satires, and French romans comiques to expand on the theory of the novel's origins which will be chapters in a book on the history of the novel as it relates to Don Quixote and the Golden Age Spanish picaresque. The thesis being that the novel arises as a critique of literary tradition but critique is only necessary when a restrictive neo-classicism attempts to limit the existing forms of narrative expression.