Roman et savoir avant Cervantès

Abstract

Novel and Knowledge before Cervantes Traditional narratives, whether epic narratives or romances, testify to a desire to control the passage of time. But closer examination, following Bakhtin, shows that Greek romances are already suffused by irony and by a lingering doubt that time can be vanquished - which is perhaps why Cervantes, criticising arthurian epic in Don Quichotte and imitating romances in Persiles, is a novelist.