Ideas of Narration Before Don Quixote

We shall read fictional narratives (and some narrative poetry) from the first moments of preserved literature up to Don Quixote, for clues about how earlier writers thought about form and narration. Of what was narrative fashioned before “omniscience” was a relevant term? Before there was a science of psychology that could speak to the protagonists? What can we say about the diversity and unpredictability of early narrative writing, and how does that contrast with the more consistent look and feel of the nineteenth century? How can these “ancient fictions” inform an interest in narrative innovation and formal ingenuity today?