Irish Translation Forum

Redwolf wrote:Samuel Richardson made it up for his novel "Pamela" (often called the first English novel). It's a pretty combination of syllables is all, I'm afraid.

Not true.

Behind the Name wrote:[Pamela] was invented in the 16th century by the poet Sir Philip Sidney for use in his poem 'Arcadia'. He possibly intended it to mean "all sweetness" from Greek pan "all" and meli "honey"

Also, there were many novels before Samuel Richardson. I think John Lyly's The Anatomy of Wit was the earliest.

erigena wrote:

Redwolf wrote:Samuel Richardson made it up for his novel "Pamela" (often called the first English novel). It's a pretty combination of syllables is all, I'm afraid.

Not true.

Behind the Name wrote:[Pamela] was invented in the 16th century by the poet Sir Philip Sidney for use in his poem 'Arcadia'. He possibly intended it to mean "all sweetness" from Greek pan "all" and meli "honey"

Also, there were many novels before Samuel Richardson. I think John Lyly's The Anatomy of Wit was the earliest.

They've been arguing back and forth about that for ages. Richardson still generally gets the credit...and the speculation about the origin is little more than that (and usually falls at the door of those who desperately want the name to mean SOMETHING).

Scholars also argue about who wrote the first novel, but Richardson's "Pamela" is generally considered to be the first book that really, truly, represented the genre (and even its status is debatable, as it's an epistolary).

And, of course, right after that came the first official spoof of a novel...Fielding's "Shamela."

Redwolf

So you don't consider Daniel Defoe a novelist? Or Jonathan Swift? Or John Bunyan?

erigena wrote:So you don't consider Daniel Defoe a novelist? Or Jonathan Swift? Or John Bunyan?

Perhaps this essay will clarify:

http://qcpages.qc.edu/ENGLISH/Staff/ric ... mckeon.htm

"Pamela" is, without a doubt, the first work that is indisputably a novel in the literary sense of the term. Earlier narrative works were working toward that status, but Richardson's "Pamela" is the earliest work whose status as a novel in every sense of the word is not in dispute.

Webster defines "Novel" as:

1 : an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events.

We tend to play fast and loose with the term today, assigning it to just about any relatively long work of fiction, but that's not really an accurate approach. Works that were written before "Pamela" and that are approaching the form of the "novel" are referred to as "proto-novels."

Redwolf