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The novel is literary form that most fully reflects the individualistic and innovative reorientation introduced by Renaissance philosophy. Previous literary forms had reflected the general tendency of their cultures to make conformity to traditional practice, the major test of truth. The plots of classical and Renaissance epics, for example, were based on past history or fable, and an author`s treatment was judged largely according to a view of literary decorum derived from the accepted models in the genre. This literary traditionalism was first and most fully challenged by the novel, whose primary criterion was truth to individual experience-individual experience that is always unique and therefore new, the novel is thus the logical literary vehicle of a culture that, in the last few centuries, has set an unprecedented value on originality. The novel, is therefore well named.

This emphasis on the new accounts for some of the critical difficulties that the novel presents. When we judge a work in another genre, a recognition of its literary models is important, our evaluation depends on our analysis of the author`s skill in handing the appropriate formal conventions. In contrast, it is damaging for a novel to imitate another literary work. Since the novelist`s primary task is to convey the impression of fidelity to human experience, attention to any preestablished formal conventions can only endanger his or her success. The formlessness of the novel, as compared, say, with tragedy or the ode, follows from this, the poverty of the novel`s formal conventions is the price it must pay for its realism.

But the absence of formal conventions in the novel is unimportant compared to its rejection of traditional plots. The extent of a plot`s originality is never easy to determine. Nevertheless, a broad comparison between the novel and previous literary forms reveals an important difference. Defoe and Richardson are the first great writers in English literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legend, or previous literature, In this they differ from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Million, for instance, who ,like the writers of Greece and Rome, habitually used traditional plots and who did so because they accepted the general promise of their times that, since nature is essentially complete and unchanging, its records, whether scriptural, legendary, or historical, constitute a definitive repertoire of human experience.

This point of view continued to be expressed during the nineteenth century, the opponents of Balzac, for example, used it to deride his preoccupation with contemporary and ,in their view, ephemeral reality. But at the same time, from the renaissance onward, there was a growing tendency for individual experience to replace collective tradition as the ultimate arbiter of reality, and this transition constitutes an important part of the cultural background of the rise of the novel.

According to the passage, their plot choices indicated which of the following about Chaucer and Shakespeare?

Athese authors were guided by a more traditional view of literature than their contemporaries were
BThese authors had a greater concern for literary origanality than their contemporaries had
CThese authors differed with each other concering the elements of a traditional plot
DThese authors were influenced by a particular assumption about nature
EThese authors were more interested in mythological than in historical subjects

D显示答案

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