It is a common misunderstanding to situate the origin of the novel in early 18th-century English literature. For precisely the most accomplished and important representative thereof, Henry Fielding (1707-1754) with his in particular, can be shown to have been rooted, and most deeply at that, in the history of the European novel since Greek and Roman antiquity. The study uncovers these roots and traces this history from the 2nd century onward, discussing, on the one hand, Heliodorus’s («Egyptian Stories») and, on the other, Apuleius’s («The GoldenAss») and investigating their enormous impact on European letters. In a manner of speaking, Heliodorus founded the courtly-heroic novel of the Baroque, which flourished mainly in France and Germany, while Apuleius founded the picaresque novel, which originated in Spain, but also flourished in Germany (Grimmelshausen) and France as well as in England. Cervantes – not only with his but likewise with his unduly neglected – partook of both strands of this international development that culminated in Fielding’s masterwork of 1749. Thus, constitutes the final joinder of one and a half millennia of novel-writing in Europe; in fact, it even includes the respective theory.weiterlesen