Aristotelian Foundations of German Novella Theory

Abstract

Erich Auerbach credits Boccaccio's The Decameron with introducing a new medium (prose), a new theme (actual occurrences in contemporary life), and a new genre (the novella) into the mainstream of post-classical letters (188-89). Boccaccio's innovations apparently left literary critics of the Renaissance at a loss, for they failed to develop a theory for this genre – a failure that Robert J. Clements and Joseph Gibaldi attribute to the fact that classical aestheticians had not dealt with prose as an artistic medium (6). Hannelore Schlaffer takes this view one step further when she notes that Boccaccio, by choosing ignoble themes and the medium of prose, not only mocks and parodies the Horatian dictum for delectare et prodesse, but also subverts Aristotelian aesthetic principles to such a degree that she labels the early Italian novella an antiaristotelische and eine Gattung ohne Poetik (3-16). Although this narrative form gained immense popularity and spread through Romance Europe and England, it did not become part of the German genre repertoire until the late 1700s. Yet only a few decades after its initial appearance, it came to dominate the German literary landscape. This popularity was attended by many attempts at definition, for German commentators began almost immediately to speculate about the nature of the novella. Although studies abound, agreement remains elusive. Such lack of consensus prompted Harry Steinhauer to observe in 1970 that the enormous mountain of German criticism has been labouring for two generations and has not even brought forth a mouse (154). Almost another generation has passed since Steinhauer made his pronouncement, yet the mountain is still in the throes of labour. Such an impasse suggests that different critical approaches are needed. One such pathway, hitherto untrodden, involves an examination of German novella theory from an Aristotelian perspective. This approach reveals striking similarities between Aristotle's opinions about the ancient verse genres of the epic and the drama and modern critical opinions about the relatively new prose genre of the novella. Similarities raise the question of in fluence, a thorny area of investigation under even the best of circumstances. Problems in matters involving