[In following excerpt, Showalter examines Scudéry's theories of the novel, as delineated in his preface to Ibrahim.]

Serious fiction is a great deal more nebulous a concept than the comic novel, which can be limited to a dozen or so major works. A serious novel is one in which an effort is made to reproduce reality, however it be defined. As I have pointed out, most comic novels contain examples of serious novels; furthermore, the comic novelist almost unwittingly has to reproduce reality as part of his burlesque of some serious form. I will omit these serious elements of comic fiction from the rest of the discussion, however, so as to avoid ambiguous cases, even though a mistake would only introduce some confusion, not undermine the argument. Most other fiction I take to be serious in intent. As I have already showed, novelists of this era had many different ideas about the nature of reality and the novel's proper relation to it. In principle, I am imposing no a priori standards of realism on the novels, as part of the definition of seriousness. Le Diable boiteux is a serious novel, despite its fantastic frame, and so are many less known allegories, romances, and tales. I have looked for the five elements of reality—chronology, geography, names, money, and narrator—in all the two hundred and some works I located from the years 1700 to 1720. It was quickly apparent that this standard does in fact separate realistic from non-realistic fictions; the latter deliberately violate or ignore at least one, and usually several of the systems. What remains is not by any means all Realistic fiction; but the historical romance, for example, does make an effort to keep the systems of the real world intact, and thereby sets the direction for its evolution toward Realism.

From the point of view of technique, serious novels stand in direct opposition to comic novels on the central question of realism. The comic novelist deliberately keeps his fictional forms intact, while forcing into them realities which are incongruous and therefore grotesque. The serious novelist moves in the opposite direction. He perceives reality through the filter of literary forms, or attempts to describe it in literary terms; but his intention is neither to ridicule the literary viewpoint, nor to seek out incongruity. On the contrary, he writes because he thinks there is a deeper knowledge of reality to be gained from the literary analysis of it. Thus, while the comic novel tends to move from romance to its diametric opposite, from the gallant hero to the crude peasant, or from exotic settings to the nearest gutter, the serious novel tends to move by smaller steps, from the aristocratic hero to a wealthy bourgeois hero, from the palace into the townhouse. This is less an invasion of literature by ever more plebeian characters and commonplace events than an invasion by literature of ever wider areas of reality.

As I suggested before, the serious novelist resembles Don Quixote—his education and literary formation determine the way he sees his world. Don Quixote represents an extreme case, where the education excludes any lessons of experience; but Cervantes wanted to use his hero as a comic figure. The novelist need not imitate Don Quixote's intransigence to share his outlook, although it is probably true that the more unconscious the novelist's own perspective, the more convincing the portrayal. Where the bias is too obvious, the novel seems to have a thesis, although of course the author's artistic skill may compensate for his intellectual prejudices.

In the first chapters, I have given some elements of a history of serious fiction. The whole history is much too complex to undertake. In the limited area which I want to examine, the comic novels have afforded a useful summary by indirection. Every comic novel tends to touch on all the problems of the recent past. The author satirizes everything he has found ridiculous, and goes out of his way to have a pretext to mention it. The serious novelist, on the other hand, avoids any problem not essential to his theme, and often tries to conceal those he can not escape. Each comic novel gives a static picture of the condition of the novel at that time, or slightly earlier, whereas any given serious novel probably contains no more than fragmentary indications of the general situation.

The evolution implied by the comic novels starts with all the significant problems already present to some degree. The development of the genre leads to heavier and heavier emphasis on rules, derived by and large from some other literary genre. Moreover, the work itself is extended by logical deductions into the real world. Again, this is a quixotic process; the literal truth of the novel is assumed, and the consequences deduced. As these consequences came to light, the concern of the comic novelist shifted away from style, which was Scarron's chief interest, toward the narrator, which was the dominant interest of Challe, Furetière, and Marivaux. Diderot finally attacks the narrator's domination, and restores the other elements of Realism to a position of importance.

A consideration of the serious novel will reveal that progress occurs only in a very limited sense during the eighteenth century. The novel had encountered the fundamental difficulties of realism by the early years of the century, no later; yet the solutions are never satisfactory, and seldom applicable to other works, in all the five areas I have singled out. The most durable contribution in many fields was to have exhausted most of the blind alleys, notably in the conception of the narrator.

It is generally recognized that the first flowering of French rationalism occurred in the decade of the 1630's, marked by such events as the publication of Descartes's Discourse on Method, the founding of the French Academy, and the quarrel over Le Cid. Well before the triumphant years of French classicism, scholars and critics were formulating, and popular taste was imposing, the doctrine of rules. For all its lowliness as a genre, the novel did not escape the examination of reason, and it is here that the problems begin. In 1641 Georges de Scudéry published a long theoretical preface with his novel Ibrahim. Although I have already referred to this preface several times, its date as well as its intrinsic merit make a fuller consideration worthwhile. Scudéry frequented the famous salon of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where he would have met such literary legislators as Vaugelas, Chapelain, and Ménage; and as Henri Coulet observes: “… comme Chapelain, comme d'Aubignac, Scudéry croit à l'infaillibilité des règles.”¹

If one is accustomed to the common idea of the Scudérys' novels as monuments of extravagance, the theory behind them is indeed astonishingly and outstandingly rational, laying heavy emphasis on such concepts as nature and verisimilitude. The writings of the Scudérys and La Calprenède are so sound as theory, that they have been cited by Arthur Cooke as possible sources for Henry Fielding's theories. As Cooke observes, “Mlle de Scudéry and Henry Fielding enunciated principles which were in many respects almost identical; yet there is certainly little resemblance between The Grand Cyrus and Tom Jones.”² Cooke explains this by referring to changes in the meanings of terms like probability, unity, and morality; and no doubt this semantic vagueness played a role. Another factor, however, is almost certainly the difference in approaches; the Scudérys seem to have the idea that the novel can be derived from the rules, not vice versa, whereas Fielding tries to derive a theory which will justify what he instinctively knows to be a good novel.

The apparent excellence of the Scudérys' theory is misleading; they did not invent the modern novel, any more than did Horace and Aristotle, from whom they took their theory. The main significance of the preface to Ibrahim is, I believe, the proof it affords of the new seriousness with which authors were treating the novel. In a short time this theory would contribute to the downfall of the genre it was written to defend—just as Descartes's method was eventually used to overthrow his physics, and just as the emulation of the ancients finally produced the moderns. The reader of the 1660's held ideas of reality and verisimilitude similar to Racine's. It was natural that they should favor a novel which incorporated similar qualities—density, psychological intensity, dramatic crises, abstraction—and prefer the short nouvelle to the long roman.

The preface to Ibrahim touches, sometimes indirectly, on the themes I have been discussing. Scudéry admires the epic chronology, because it enables the author to preserve a unity of time: “… et pour s'enfermer dans des bornes raisonnables, ils ont fait (et moy aprés eux) que l'Histoire ne dure qu'une année, et que le reste est par narration. …”³ Although, as Scudéry states, he is merely copying Homer, Virgil, Tasso, and Heliodorus, it is worthwhile to note his justification for the principle of a unity of time: “Ils n'ont pas fait comme ces Peintres qui font voir en une mesme toile un Prince dans le berceau, sur le Trône, et dans le cercueil, et qui par cette confusion peu judicieuse embarassent celuy qui considere leur Ouvrage.” The rationale for the unity of time lies outside the work, in the reader's perception. He must be able to embrace the work within a clear rational framework. Similar demands of reason, all purely external to the work itself, will be made regarding the narrator and even the details of the story; and it seems probable that this rationalism, more than anything else, led to the collapse of the long roman. Ibrahim was more than three thousand pages long, Clélie over seven thousand, and Le Grand Cyrus over thirteen thousand. No factitious structure could overcome the truly embarrassing confusion of such works.

A second element of chronology is the use of historical facts. Scudéry proposes to combine historical facts with poetic beauties to create the novel. History serves primarily to lend verisimilitude, which Scudéry calls “la pierre fondamentale de ce bastiment … sans elle rien ne peut toucher; sans elle rien ne sçauroit plaire. …” (p. 46). Scudéry's method is described plainly: “… pour donner plus de vraysemblance aux choses, j'ay voulu que les fondemens de mon Ouvrage fussent historiques, mes principaux personnages marquez dans l'Histoire veritable comme personnes illustres, et les guerres effectives.” This doctrine did not, however, extend to the chronological veracity of the events; Scudéry is explicit about that: “Or de peur qu'on ne m'objecte que j'ay raproché quelques incidens que l'Histoire a fait voir plus éloignez, le grand Virgile sera mon garant, luy qui, dans sa divine Eneïde, a fait paroistre Didon quatre Siecles aprés le sien” (p. 48). The same application can of course be found in the classical theatre. By verisimilitude, the classicists clearly had in mind only the possible existence of a thing, or the possible occurrence of an event, and the possibility was to be judged by reason. Historical realism was a partial guarantee of verisimilitude, but the possibility of a battle, or of a heroic deed, was extra-temporal once it had occurred. In the classical spirit, the rules of art take precedence; it is better to sacrifice the chronology than the unity of time. Clearly, though, a major self-contradiction underlies the doctrine, and the arbitrary unit of time would increasingly yield before the demands of historical veracity.

Money, geography, and names are fairly technical matters, and do not receive much attention from Scudéry. Money, indeed, is not mentioned, except that any but the most general allusion to it would be banned from the novel by the following precept on style: “sans parler comme les extravagans, ny comme le peuple, j'ay essayé de parler comme les honnestes gens” (p. 49). Geography is touched on; but the epic of antiquity had had no discernible unity of place, and so the question did not much concern Scudéry. He rejects the use of mythical kingdoms, asking: “comment seray-je touché des infortunes de la Reine de Guindaye, et du Roy d'Astrobacie, puisque je sçay que leurs Royaumes mesmes ne sont point en la Carte universelle, ou pour mieux dire, en l'estre des choses?” (p. 46). The judge of plausibility once again turns out to be a pedantic form of reason, and the places, like the historical events, have an abstract existence. To name them is to make them exist in the reader's mind, which has accepted them on the authority of the historians. Passing to personal names, Scudéry remarks that “l'imposition des noms est une chose à laquelle chacun doit songer, et à laquelle neantmoins tout le monde n'a pas songé” (p. 48). Scudéry has carefully given Turkish names to Turkish characters, where in the past many authors had used Greek names. We are still in the distant exotic past, and Ibrahim, Artamène, Clélie, or Pharamond may pass for realistic names because real people once bore them. But the principle will constitute a grave problem once the novel begins to treat subjects closer to the present and closer to home. Then the reader will still want to know where and who (and perhaps even how much), and the author will be hard pressed to stay in the no-man's-land between particular realities and general possibilities.

Since Scudéry relates the novel to the epic, he accepts the epic narrator, who is a creator and who can therefore go beyond the limits of a single point of view. In the preface he appears even to advocate a fuller usage of this power by authors in saying: “Aprés avoir descrit une avanture, un dessein hardy, ou quelque évenement surprenant, capable de donner les plus beaux sentimens du monde, certains Autheurs se sont contentez de nous asseurer qu'un tel Heros pensa de fort belles choses, sans nous les dire, et c'est cela seulement que je desirois sçavoir” (p. 47). The main thrust of his argument is toward the matter of the novel, however, not its style of narration; Scudéry opposes the piling up of adventures and favors psychological analysis. This in itself looks to the future and shows the kinship between the long novels and the nouvelles which succeeded them. Scudéry comments on the adventure stories: “cette narration seche et sans art est plus d'une vieille Chronique que d'un Roman …” (p. 46), and therein lay the difficulty. As novelists sought more and more to take shelter under the rules of historical writing, the historical narrator became more and more dominant, and he did not have the right to explore the mind. Even Scudéry is ambiguous, for although he wants to know the thoughts and feelings of the heroes, he talks most about their speeches. For example, he writes: “Ce n'est point par les choses de dehors, ce n'est point par les caprices du destin que je veux juger de luy; c'est par les mouvemens de son ame, et par les choses qu'il dit.” Or again he writes: “Or pour les faire connoistre parfaitement, il ne suffit pas de dire combien de fois ils ont fait naufrage, et combien de fois ils ont rencontré des voleurs: mais il faut faire juger par leurs discours quelles sont leurs inclinations …,” and he cites with approbation the sentence: “Parle afin que je te voye” (p. 47). In short, he at least leaves the way open for such devices as the overheard soliloquy and the confidant, the conventions by which the seventeenth-century novelist tried to accomplish the study of the human soul.

Chronology: Scudéry's epic rule for the unity of time enjoyed a short prominence. It was applied in the long romances, and therefore satirized by Scarron, Furetière, and Marivaux. When the nouvelle came into vogue, however, this principle ceased to be relevant.⁴ It does not, in fact, have any relation to the question of realism, but is a purely formal matter. The decline of the long romance and the rise of the nouvelle indicate the growing dominance of the historical element over the epic.

If the rule for the unity of time had little future after 1660, the principles of historical verisimilitude were full of consequences. Scudéry, under the sheltering authority of the Ancients, argued that the historical precedent guaranteed the possibility of the event; he did not really intend to put his novels into a real historical chronology. At sufficient distance in time and space, the method works reasonably well. The average reader is likely to know that the events took place, and that the characters existed; he is not likely to know precisely when.

Notes

1. Coulet, Anthologie, p. 44.

2. Arthur L. Cooke, “Henry Fielding and the Writers of Heroic Romance,” PMLA, 62 (1947), 994.

3. Coulet, Anthologie, p. 45.

4. René Godenne, in Histoire de la nouvelle française, argues that the nouvelle quickly adopted all the conventions of the roman, including the epic chronology, and preserved them intact well into the eighteenth century (pp. 108-110). I do not challenge the accuracy of his facts, but question the value of his rigid genre distinctions, for he analyzes only works designated “nouvelle” on the title page or in the preface. As I showed in chapter one, the roman actually absorbed all the innovations presented by the nouvelle around 1660, as well as later innovations associated with subgenres like the nouvelle historique, the histoire véritable, the mémoires, etc. The persistence of an archaic technique like the epic chronology, even in works designated nouvelle, does not alter the fact that around 1660 the sudden vogue of the nouvelle signaled a shift in interest from the epic approach to the historical.