"novel" = an epic poem or full-length poetic drama

[Jonathan Lighter]

Short answer: no.

  Long answer: Almost any semantic shift can be explained (or defended) as "reasonable." (To understand all is to forgive all.)  Jumping ahead two hundred years, if "novel" = book (more or less) is established by then, future scholars will look back and regard the shift from "book-length fiction" to be a simple ex. of semantic broadening and of interest only to language historians. To some of us, however, in the benighted "Early Postmodern English" period, the shift is dramatic and disagreeable.

  I find the shift interesting partly because if I had any doubt about the genre of the Odyssey, or the Inferno, or Richard III, I'd check before I called it a "novel," particularly if I were already online or, alternatively, writing for publication in a professional journal. That writers from so many backgrounds have been making this error for so long tells me that something real, if still relatively minor, is happening and will continue, particularly since it's so esily explicable by reference to more than one trend.

  In the case of Dr. P's article, at least one editor had to read it and agree that Homer wrote novels. I'd have thought "Homer's Odyssey" would have been the default phrase. At best, P and his editor did not feel that the distinction between "novel" and (at least some) other book-length genres is very important. Or else they not only believe mistakenly that Homer "wrote" prose, but that "novels" have been with us since the dawn of Western lit. This amazes me.

  JL


  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
Subject: Re: "novel" = an epic poem or full-length poetic drama
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At 10/11/2006 09:59 PM, you wrote:
> 2001 Gene A. Plunka "The Jean-Claude van Itallie Papers in the
> Department of Special Collections and Archives at Kent State
> University," in _Resources for American Literary Study_ XXVII 122:
> The Odyssey: A Musical Theater Piece (27 Oct. 1990), adaptation of
> Homer's novel includes three drafts.
>
> (Note: Prof. Gene A. Plunka "received his Ph.D. in comparative
> literature from The University of Maryland [in 1978], where he
> specialized in modern and contemporary drama." He is currently
> Professor of English at the University of Memphis.)

Not to excuse Plunka, but if someone is only familiar with Homer's
works in prose renditions, wouldn't it be reasonable to call them
"novels"? (I ignore the possibility that they are historical
accounts, and therefore non-fiction; I'm just contrasting with "poems".)

Joel

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