Asian novel
Asian novel is a late 17th and early 18th century term for a novel set in the Asian region (broadly including realms such as Cyprus, Libya, Lebanon, Babylon, Assyria, India) and preferably in the more distant past, the can be the time of the biblical empires or an ancient or early medieval ambience.
Term and generic aspects
The term "Asian novel" was not used in German studies. It can be found on title pages and in prefaces to novels, in which authors comment on their (further) work. In the preface to his show place of the gallant and learned world (1711), Johann Leonhard Rost promises supplies in this way:
- [...] which might come down to something Asiatic, then always sticking to one way of writing, I as the reader might as well get annoyed with me, about this I also got news that my Bellandra and Atalanta were bought up for that very reason they contain foreign events.
The Celander (there are certainly two authors who used this pseudonym), who for the topsy-turvy world ( Cölln: posthumous P. Marteau Erben , 1718) is responsible, dials the same terminology:
- [...] Because the alternation is also pleasant for everyone, so promise to come up with an Asian state novel first, so that the highly inclined reader can recognize that I am looking for nothing more than to be with all respect at all times Whose | The 3rd december | 1717. | most devoted | CELANDER
A central position in this genre was taken by Madeleine de Scudéry , often imitated by German authors.
Somewhat isolated with his mix of the comic and the serious, Anselm von Zieglers positioned himself very successfully with his Asiatic Banise, or The bloody yet brave Pegu (1689) on offer. In the end, the style was determined by the titles written by August Bohse alias Talanders. Authors like Johann Leonhard Rost , alias Meletaon, emulated him with the greatest success in the early 18th century.
The appeal of the Asian novels, of which around three titles a year came out in the second half of the 17th and the first of the 18th, lay in different aspects. First, the actions touched upon the subjects of the current operas . The readers were thus provided with a repertoire of scenes and touchable images (several of these novels were also reworked into operas, some contain entire opera texts, others are opera elaborations).
Again and again, heroines came to the fore in the production, who had to flee from home at a young age in order to save themselves or their romantic relationships. Unlike the worlds of other novels, the Asians were largely left without an effective internal public. There weren't any newspapers here to follow you like 17th and 18th century newspapers would. The princess, who fled from her father's palace to avoid a measure of violence by her stepmother or her aged father - violence ruled the unchristian area - had to immediately assume a male identity under false clothes in order to protect herself. No public prevented such impersonation. Usually a little later she was the victim of an accidental kidnapping by robbers or pirates, which started the chain of adventures in which she had to regain her reputation. The game about assumed identities of lower class (enslavement was popular here) made these novels particularly exciting. It was suitable for lessons in intelligent conduite , that is, in intelligent handling of social roles. At the same time, this same game of identities was tempting for young female readers, who exposed themselves to the greatest dangers in male roles for the duration of the novel. Arbitrariness determined the Asian empires - an arbitrariness that overshadowed everything that young women of the bourgeois or noble class had to endure from their parents when they marry against their will.
A game of erroneous identities added charm to many of the Asian novels. You might not be who you thought you were: as a child you might have been exchanged in an accident or an intrigue. The changes resulting from such discoveries brought to the fore the question of the wise conduite, the flexible behavior with which it was to be mastered, and they taught how to make the best of new situations to which one had to submit .
Another story
The "Asian novels" of the 17th century initially took the leading position among the new " gallant " titles. As an advisor on fashionable behavior, production fell into its first crisis when the ideal was transferred from teachers to students around 1700. Students who wanted to shine in current fashions after 1700 and who wrote gallant novels for this purpose preferred to make themselves and their peers into fictional heroes. The fashion of Asian novels suffered another blow with the translation of the stories from the Arabian Nights (1704–1717) into French and from there into German and English. With the original Arabic stories, there was a surprisingly different production of Asian novels, one that made the traditional genre appear as one of the European fantasies. The original Arabic stories were promptly imitated by European authors as being much more authentic. In the same process, fictitious "Asian" observations of life in Europe became popular. Montesquieu set the milestone here with his Lettres persanes , the Persian letters (1722).
On the way to the 19th century, the Asian novel became a new "Oriental novel" in which the cultural debate was (allegedly) of interest. The old genre lives on today in trivial areas and changed the genre: Hollywood's "sandal films" ultimately preserve much of the reception pleasures and the horror of an arbitrary pre-Christian exercise of power with which the original genre "Asian novels" sold itself.
Title (selection)
- August Bohse , The Unfortunate Princess Arsinöe, Which through a very pleasant love story both in strange state and happiness confusions [...] of Talandern (1687)
- Heinrich Anselm von Ziegler and Kliphausen , Die Asiatic Banise, or The bloody but courageous Pegu [...] Auffgesetzet by HA v. Z u. K. (Leipzig: Joh. Fr. Gleditsch 1689).
- August Bohse , The faithful slave Doris [...] of Talandern (1696).
- Johann Leonhard Rost , The unfortunate Atalanta [...] by Meletaon (Franckfurt / Leipzig: W. Michahelles, 1708).
- Johann Leonhard Rost , The Serene Hermiontes [...] by Meletaon (Nuremberg: J. Albrecht, 1714).
- The love story of the most brilliant princess Medea from Cyprus [...] by Ormenio (1719).
literature
- Olaf Simons: Marteau's Europe or the novel before it became literature: a study of the German and English book supply from 1710-1720 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 423–454 - ISBN 90-420-1226-9