The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare

This is a fascinating excavation of the literary ground before Shakespeare. Jusserand, the French diplomat who became a renowned Shakespeare scholar, traces the strange birth of English prose fiction in the decades surrounding the Elizabethan era. Before the novel found its form, there were wild precursors: Thomas Nash's biting satirical romances, Robert Greene's autobiographical confessions, John Lyly's elaborate prose comedies. These writers, nearly forgotten now, created the conditions for the prose fiction that would eventually flourish. Jusserand shows how the Norman Conquest's cultural mixing, the rise of the printing press, and Elizabethan society's hunger for entertainment all converged to make England ready for stories in a new mode. For anyone curious about where the English novel truly began, this provides an essential counter-narrative to the usual literary histories.