As a literary Protheus and peerless genre chameleon, the novel defies explanation. We can, however, recreate its history by studying renowned works dating back to antiquity that laid the groundwork for the development of various novelistic forms. Each represents a rebirth of the novel, meaning that each constitutes an encounter between a set of formal traits and a subject that might also be called « thematic » or « imaginary ».

The « rebirths » of the novels acknowledged, presented and tracked in this book are those few aesthetic models whose popularity and success have spanned generations, centuries — and even continents. In retracting the multifaceted history of certain favoured novelistic forms through their principal development phases, the author's hope is that this little book devoted to general and comparative literature will be considered as a contribution to a poetic history which, in terms of exhaustive works, has yet to be written.

Daniel-Henri Pageaux teaches General and Comparative Literature at Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III).