Remapping the Rise of the European Novel

Book excerpt: Fifty years on from Ian Watt's pioneering study, The Rise of the novel, Jenny Mander brings together the work of bibliographers, literary scholars and socio-cultural historians to present a new European perspective on the development of the genre. Remapping the rise of the European novel investigates how prose fiction between 1500 and 1800 was simultaneously shaped by the development of the nation-state and by multiple crossings of geographical, cultural and linguistic boundaries. Drawing on evidence from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Greece, as well as England, authors argue for a more inclusive history that identifies origins in different times and places, and trace how they interact or diverge. Through detailed case studies and bibliometric analyses, the authors explore the importance of continental and colonial travel in fashioning early-modern novelistic discourse, and examine how translation helps to disseminate 'novel' fictions. Discussion of popularity and pleasure - topics often excluded from traditional histories of the novel- sheds new light on the ways we think about the relationship between literary and social history.