Top Ten Fictional Narratives in Early Modern Europe
Helwi Blom et al.
Top Ten Fictional Narratives in Early Modern Europe: Translation, Dissemination and Mediality, edited by Helwi Blom, Rita Schlusemann (Freie Universität Berlin), Anna Katharina Richter (Universität Zürich), and Krystyna Wierzbicka-Trwoga (Instytut Literatury Polskiej UW), examines ten of the most popular fictional narratives in early modern Europe (1470-1800). It is available in open access.
Transnational perspective on popular narrative
The narratives examined include: Apollonius, Historia septem sapientum Romae, Amadis de Gaula, Fortunatus, Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne, Melusine, Griseldis, Aesopus - Vita et Fabulae, Reynaert de vos, and Till Ulenspiegel. Each of these narratives was printed in several European languages and remained on the market for centuries.
Combining approaches from literary studies and book history, this work offers, for the first time, a transnational perspective on popular narrative fiction in early modern Europe. It explores the spatio-temporal transmission of the texts in different languages as well as the materiality of the editions and the booksellers and printers involved in their publication.
Thus, the study offers an unprecedented insight in the multi-faceted processes that shaped the transtemporal and transcultural circulation of popular fictional narratives as well as the development of popular print as an early modern publisher’s genre.