The German Novella

Overview of the critical history of the German novella.

Originating with Boccaccio during the Italian Renaissance, the novella, a cyclical collection of frame stories in prose, quickly inspired many imitations in Italy, France, Spain and Great Britain. However, it was not widely used in Germany until the end of the eighteenth century, when, inspired by Goethe, the genre retained the original medium but abandoned the cyclical format; it rapidly grew in popularity, dominating the nineteenth century literary scene, and became the object of much artistic speculation. The orthodox theory of the novella has sharply divided the critical establishment; defended in modern times by some scholars,it has been sharply attacked by others. The German Novella: Two Centuries of Criticism is the only work in English or German that illuminates the main currents of theory formation, evaluation, and revaluation from its inception with Wieland to the present, tracing a path through the huge amount of critical material devoted to the novella.