Romanbeschouwing in voorredes 1600-1755. Deel 1: Onderzoek

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Summary

The Introduction states this study's research objectives: the tracing and charting of notions concerning the novel, as far as they are found in prefaces and forwords, in the Netherlands, between 1600 and 1755. Prefaces rather than the novels themselves, since until the middle of the eighteenth century it is especially in prefaces that theories about prose fiction abound. The poetics of the period either ignore the novel entirely or limit themselves to the observation that the novel does not belong to the realm of poetry.

The Introduction further defines the term ‘novel’, and discusses the reasons for limiting research to this period. The literary-historical method by which the material has been traced and selected is explicated and the main differences between original and translated prefaces treated. The Introduction concludes by briefly considering the literary, rhetorical and self-reflective functions of novels' prefaces.

Chapter One describes Dutch theories of the novel between 1600 and 1670. It appears that in this period there is very little cohesion or, for that matter, marked interest in the specific place of prose fiction. Writers of prefaces tend to limit themselves to very general statements regarding the novel's purpose, its veracity, characters and audience. These statements need very little rephrasing to be valid for drama as well. Although awareness of the special nature of fiction can be demonstrated, generic consciousness - in marked contrast to the contemporary situation in France - was only intuitive, which is the more remarkable when one realizes that theoretically important French prefaces were often not translated with the main text. An explanation of this phenomenon is attempted.

Chapter Two is devoted to the curious fact that P.D. Huet's Traité de l'origine des romans (1670), although it was translated almost immediately into Dutch, exerted hardly any influence on prefatory reflection in

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the period 1670-1710. The main reason for this must be must be found in the development of the Dutch novel in the last decades of the seventeenth century, which was in a direction totally antithetical to Huet's conception of the novel.

The Traité and the Dutch material is studied and used to test and occasionally criticize a number of quite divergent interpretations and evaluations, such as those of G. May and H. Coulet.

Chapter Three describes novel reflection in the decades between 1670 and 1710, a period in which patterns become manifest in the prefatory utterances which enable one to discern groupings of what may be termed theories of fictions.

A key problem discussed in the prefaces in this period is that of the verisimilitude of the narrative. Most prefacers go out of their way to convince the reader that the following text is a faithful representation of true facts. Only a very few admit to a mixture of fact and fiction or confess their work to be wholly fictitious.

The novel's (also quantitatively) conspicuous disguise as true history is explained from a number of (combined) causes: the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries are characterized by a manifest dislike of whatever reeks of invention, the novel was notorious for its imaginary nature, and official literary theory did not accept the novel as a serious representative of poetry.

The chapter is concluded by a discussion, occasioned by the very disparate ideas of authors like G. May, H. Coulet, M. Lever and K. Heitmann, of the possibility that there was a historical orientation that went beyond the mere adoption of a historiographer's mask.

Chapter Four traces three main streams in novel reflection in the period 1710-1755. First, there is the continuing suggestion of verisimilitude, more often than not supported by references to the story's artlessness. Secondly, there is an increase of self-reflection which does not conceal that the text is a product of the imagination. Lastly, and most remarkably, there is the beginning of a trend which makes the issue of veracity problematical: although the characters and incidents are not imagined, they do not directly refer or relate to actual or historical figures and events.

Besides the ever-present and prominent question of verisimilitude, the writer's attitude towards the tradition of the novel becomes an important prefatory issue in this period. Partly this results in passionate

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denial that the following text is a novel at all, partly in an explicit endorsement of the tradition of the novel. And some prefacers reject the greater part of the tradition, announcing new ways of doing things.

The fifth and last chapter discussed the four long prefaces which appeared between 1752 and 1755, in which Johannes Stinstra introduced his translation of Richardson's Clarissa. These are the only prefaces which literary historians have so far deemed worthy of frequent if casual attention. That the many other prefaces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been grossly underestimated will (it is hoped) by now be clear. Yet, Stinstra's prefaces are quite remarkable, and not only because of their length. Although they are demonstrated to have a firm basis in the tradition, they strike a different and new note. Most importantly, Stinstra makes the effect which the text must have on the reader his theoretical point of departure. Where other prefacers simply state the moral purpose of the work of art, Stinstra all the time argues the connections of narrative means and moral end. Without actually using such terms he introduces concepts such as reader identification and psychological depth of character.

The study ends with some short concluding observations and an extensive reasoned bibliography.

(Translation: Dr. P.J. de Voogd)