Reformation, 1700-1800

The publication of Robinson Crusoe did not directly lead to the mid-18th century market reform. Crusoe's books were published as dubious histories; they played the game of the scandalous early eighteenth century market, with the novel fully integrated into the realm of histories. They even appeared reprinted by one of the London newspapers as a possibly true relation of facts. Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau turned Robinson Crusoe into a classic decades later, and it took another century before one could see Defoe's book as the first English "novel" — published, as Ian Watt saw it in 1957 — as an answer to the market of French romances.

The reform of the early eighteenth century market of novels came with the production of classics: 1720 saw the decisive edition of classics of the European novel published in London with titles from Machiavelli to Marie de Lafayette. Aphra Behn's "novels" had over the last decades appeared in collections of her works. The author of the 1680s had become a classic by now. Fénelon had become a classic years ago, as had Heliodorus. The works of Petronius and Longos appeared, equipped with prefaces which put them into the tradition of prose fiction Huet had defined. Prose fiction itself, according to the critics, had a history of ups and downs: having run into a crisis with the Amadis, it found its remedy with the novel. It now needed continuous care. Yet, all in all, it could claim to be the most elegant part of the belles lettres, the new market segment within the bigger market of literature, embracing the new classics.

Huet's Traitté de l'origine des romans, first published in 1670 and now circulating in a number of translations and editions, won a central position among those writings which dealt with prose fiction. The Treatise had created the first corpus of texts to be discussed and it had been the first title that demonstrated how one could "interpret" worldly fictions, just as a theologian would interpret parts of the gospel in a theological debate. The interpretation needed its aims, of course, and Huet had offered a number of questions one could ask: What did the fictional work of a foreign culture or distant period tell us about those who constructed the fiction? What were the cultural needs such stories answered? Are there fundamental anthropological premises which make us create fictional worlds? Did these fictions entertain, divert and instruct? Did they — as one could assume when reading ancient and medieval myths — just provide a substitute for better, more scientific knowledge, or did they add to the luxuries of life a particular culture enjoyed? The ancient Mediterranean erotic stories could afford such an interpretation.

The interpretation and analysis of classics placed readers of fictions in an entirely new and improved position: it made a vast difference whether you read a romance and got lost in a dream world or whether you read the same romance with a preface telling you more about the Greeks, Romans, or Arabs who produced titles like the Aethopica or The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (first published in Europe from 1704 to 1715 in French, and translated immediately from this edition into English and German).