The oldest novel is debated, but The Tale of Genji, written in 11th century Japan, is recognized as a novel and has had a significant influence on Japanese literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey are also considered forerunners of the modern novel. The novel form emerged in the West in the 15th century, and the word “novel” entered the English language around 1400. The novel is a resilient and flexible form of literary expression that has evolved independently in various forms.
The answer to this question varies, depending on who you’re talking to and how a “novel” is defined. If a novel is treated as a prose narrative of significant length, the oldest novel is probably The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in 11th century Japan. The Tale of Genji is certainly recognizable as a novel to modern eyes; in fact, it continues to be widely read, and has been translated into numerous languages. This book had an enormous influence on Japanese literature and continues to be cited as a major source of inspiration by leading Japanese novelists today.
However, when epics are included in the “novel” camp, and some scholars do, things get a little more complicated. Both The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey are much older than The Tale of Genji and could in some sense be considered forerunners of the modern novel. The Odyssey, in particular, has had a huge influence on Western culture and literature; the themes of this epic appear again and again in Western art, music and writing. If you don’t count The Odyssey as the oldest novel since it doesn’t meet the strict definition of a novel, it was certainly influential.
The oldest novel’s identity dispute might seem petty, but it can be intriguing and quite revealing. People who claim publications like Robinson Crusoe (1719) as “the first novel” choose to blatantly ignore works like The Tale of Genji, along with numerous so-called “Novels” written in Spanish, French and Italian as early as the 12th century. century. Robinson Crusoe isn’t even the oldest novel in English, although modern readers may find it difficult to understand the English used by authors like Geoffrey Chaucer.
In the West, the novel form appears to have emerged around the 15th century, although several outliers were written earlier. Books such as Le Morte D’Artur, The Canterbury Tales and The Adventures of the Esplandian were all published in the 15th, paving the way for the publication of huge numbers of novels with the advent of printing and movable type. The word “novel” itself entered the English language around 1400, just in time for Miguel de Cervantes to write Galatea and then Don Quixote. The word comes from the Italian novella. In the 16th century, the novel was a firmly entrenched literary device and today it shows no signs of letting up.
One of the most remarkable things about the novel is that this form is incredibly resilient, despite, or perhaps because of, its simplicity. The historical evidence also seems to suggest that various forms of the novel evolved independently, which is part of the problem with deciding on the true “oldest novel.” Apparently something about this simple but incredibly flexible form of literary expression only works for authors everywhere.
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