《History and the Early English Novel》是1997年Cambridge University Press出版的圖書，作者是Robert Mayer。
基本介紹
- 書名：History and the Early English Novel
- 作者：Robert Mayer
- 出版社：Cambridge University Press
- 出版時間：1997年4月3日
- 頁數：264 頁
- 裝幀：Hardcover
- ISBN：9780521563772
內容簡介
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 Defoe's 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.
