Talk:Proto-novel

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	Literature Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to narrative novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.
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Seeing The Golden Ass, I fail to see how post-2nd-century novels can be forwarded as "first novel". There can be the "first modern novel", "the first Sanskrit novel", etc., but discussion of "first ever" need be restricted to times earlier than the 2nd century. dab (ᛏ) 15:25, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

There is no clear definition as to what is a novel so this list is going to be tricky, but Don Quixote is one of the books most often cited as the first novel partly because it is a clear break with the past fashion for Romance (genre). A little bit of dividing of the list, as I have done, I think allows a better scope for this page. As such it should probably be back at something like the old name Candidates for the first novel. Waddya think? MeltBanana 16:15, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel. Not, however, the first novella, let alone the first roman. This is beside the point. There is really nothing that would speak against categorizing "The Golden Ass" as a novel. So when looking for the "first novel" not restricted to "modern", there can be no discussion of post 2nd century candidates. In any case, there are many entries listed now that are not "candidates for first novel" at all, but rather "first English novel", "first German novel" etc., and it would be a loss to delete them. Therefore, the present title, with its wider focus, fits the contents better. dab (ᛏ) 19:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

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I just saw this page and think it should be eliminated or brought onto a more specific subject. It is a page about texts we would call novels though they might or might not have been called novels - which is fairly erratic. It does in any case not say more than the article novel presently does.

If we want this page to exist we should be strict about the treminology. The early novel was what is today known as the novella. The other thing is the early romance to be divided into heroical and satirical romances.

Petron's Satyricon and Cervantes Don Quixote are not early "novels", they are early satirical romances. The terminology should be observed as we actually have another article on early romances. So please read the novel article and keep this one in line. --Olaf Simons 09:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

this is a sub-article to novel per WP:SS. its purpose is to discuss pre-modern and early modern texts in particular that arguably qualify as predecessors of the genre, or that arguably could be called "novel" were they published today. Maybe pick a better title for it, but do keep it. dab (ᛏ) 10:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I understand that - I wrote most of that article (novel). If it is a sub-article we should be aware of that other sub-article on early romances and focus on the tradition of the early novels in opposition to early romances. It is no need to offer that opposition in the main article if the sub-article is written with less awareness of terminology and lines of tradition. --Olaf Simons 19:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I hear you. This here is, after all, just a glorified list. Feel free to move things around as long as no information is lost :) dab (ᛏ) 19:53, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Merge

The article should clearly be merged with novel. If this project presumes to retain some encyclopaedicity, it should strive to provide some sort of perspective. We could start articles about "early novel", "late novel", "not so early novel", "bad novel", "funny novel" and pump them with arbitrarily chosen entries, but this would not add reputation to the project. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 07:41, 28 September 2006 (UTC)