ABSTRACT
The novel proper begins when readers become interested in the life and fortunes of men of their own day, described with some measure of realistic detail, and with reasonable attention to the laws of probability. The third Spanish novel to gain wide success was a fictitious book of memoirs, La Vida del escudero Marcos de Obregon by Vicente Espinel. The French novel of the seventeenth century makes no such fresh beginnings as that of Spain, and is seldom as free from artifice as Grimmelshausen's masterpiece. Pierre Marivaux was the author of certain long novels which display not only the realism of urban life but some of the qualities of sensibility which were to be more fully developed by his English contemporary Samuel Richardson. While the aristocratic novel attained shape, formality, and a sober moralizing style, the middle-class story, though depending always on Spanish models, moved towards realism more factual than psychological.
