The Novel in Europe

(19th June 2022)

Hazel

Hello, welcome to Bread and thread, I am Hazel,

Nick Blake

and I'm not Liz

Hazel

you are hearing the dulcet tones of Nick, liz's spouse, who is going to talk to us about our main topic today. Which is exciting and new. And well not new, because they've been on podcast before several times, and done a great job. So, yeah, it's gonna be a fun time. And I'm trying to think of how to swap the rest of our introduction, I guess. We are two friends who met because of another friend who has studied archaeology. And both of us also like making things and baking things, and history. And we're going to talk about that today.

Nick Blake

We certainly are. now, this week, I have mostly been baking. Well, I just I just had a fairly simple tea but with a little twist. We had mac and cheese, which is a simple staple. But we often like to use some sage Derby in it. Oh. So sage Derby if you don't know is a very creamy cheese with a bit of sage on it. And if you use it as a melting cheese, it makes everything turn green. Yeah, we call it Shrek and cheese. I think we shouldn't.

Hazel

I was really into it until that.

Nick Blake

Yeah, I have regrets. But once you're in the swamp, you can't get out. I think that's the moral of Shrek. [Godawful Shrek voice] this is ma cheese

Hazel

Yeah, I, I think that is the deeper meaning if you read between the lines.

Nick Blake

Yeah.

Hazel

That sounds delicious, though. That is a good idea.

Nick Blake

And it's all also what we've been doing because we used to put in a little bit of a little bit of nutmeg in cheese sauces or white sauces, because it's a nice compliment. Instead, we because we have some mace instead, which is a little bit more more of a savory type of nutmeg flavor.

Hazel

It's the other part of the nutmeg right?

Nick Blake

Yeah. We've been using that instead. And so that really kind of deepens the flavor, especially working with the sage. And of course, a little dash of paprika.

Hazel

Of course. You guys are so good with the flavors.

Nick Blake

Yeah, I suppose it's mostly Liz. I like spicy things. And Liz makes things actually tastes good.

Hazel

Sometimes they can be good and spicy.

Nick Blake

This is very true. It's the name of a restaurant I'm going to set up things have to be either good, spicy, or both.

Hazel

I reckon that could that could do very well.

Nick Blake

So what have you been making or baking this week?

Hazel

Ah, I have not again, not that much time I did make some banging flapjacks. We still had blackcurrents in the freezer from last year. So I made I just went around like what we had in the cupboard and I made some dark chocolate almond and blackcurrant flapjacks.

And they were delicious. (they sound banging) Yeah, it was so good.

I love a Flapjack because it's pretty simple. And you get to melt the golden syrup and the butter in together. And that is fun. And also you can just put whatever you have in it and it will taste delicious and flapjackie.

Nick Blake

It's good to do like a good Flapjack even the bad flapjacks are okay.

Hazel

So yeah, that's pretty much yeah, I've been knitting some socks.

Nick Blake

What is that to Jack ratio, by the way? ideally

Hazel

I think they have to be at least 60% jack.

Nick Blake

Okay. Jack flaps. Good to know. So you've been making socks before I interrupted you.

Hazel

It was it was important information. Yeah, I've just been knitting socks. I'm not a big sock knitter. But I was recently given some knitted socks by my boyfriend's mom. And they're great and it reminded Meanwhile, like hand knitted socks and making some. Yeah. So what are we going to talk about today?

Nick Blake

We're talking about that most beloved inventions, the novel. It's one of our, I think after. Yeah, TV, film and video games. It's one of our newest, one of our newer forms of entertainment.

Hazel

How novel! Eyyy.

so the novel as a, as a thing. I didn't realize it was quite that new.

Nick Blake

It's one of those things where, like, like a lot of things in history. It's, it's one of those things where it really depends. Like,

it's a matter of kind of, I guess, codifying, and, and classifying sometimes. Like, for instance, when you did the episode on where it talks about the Ploughman's Lunch, having a bit of bread and cheese and, and stuff like that. That's as old as the hills as a practice. (Yeah) But somebody's putting it together and saying, that's what that's called. I have I have claimed this. Now, everybody has to pay me when they call it that, or whatever. I think that's the kind of dist uh the kind of distinction we're looking at. (Okay) So

you can get prose stories that are like longer than a short story. Going back about a couple millennia, you can get ancient Greek and Roman stuff like Petronius's Satyricon, the Golden Ass by Apuleius, But essentially, you often get stories that are just simple but longer than your average little campfire fable. They're a little bit more complicated in terms of the plotting, but not necessarily in terms of the emotional psychological content. And that's, that's where some people draw kind of line and say, Well, no, a novel is where you have where it's a little bit more precisely defined as a bit more craft at play, because that's just going from A to B to C, but over like 100,000 words instead of over 1000.

Hazel

Okay, that actually makes sense. I think so. Like, something with I guess more defined characters or more deeply fleshed out. Like descriptions and things.

Nick Blake

Yeah, exactly. Because you can get some Yeah, like some some of those like the golden Ass and the Satyricon. They are very, very broad things in a way where the characters are often kind of perhaps like stock characters, essentially. So it kind of resembles in terms of, in terms of the tone something like kind of a commedia dell'arte thing, or resembling some of the mythological or folkloric figures in other kinds of storytelling.

Hazel

Yeah, I guess when I think of the, the older epic tales, I guess, they seem a bit more like, you're not almost not meant to identify yourself with the characters. Like it's sort of a you're on the outside, like watching them or that, like archetypes. Yeah. But I guess, like a novel is something where I would read it because I want to, like emotionally engage with the characters and the setting. And --

Nick Blake

absolutely, I mean, that's a huge part of how novels I think are marketed now. And, and pitched to people. It's like, all right, everybody's heard every kind of, of plot before, but not every kind of story. You can make that distinction it's what I like that's very common in like you hear it in, in creative writing classes and things like that just plot is what happens the story is kind of Yeah, plot is Spider Man fights and defeats the Green Goblin once he's gotten his powers and learned how to use them story is Spider Man helps people because of his Uncle Ben. And yeah, I think it's when you get the story on top of the plot. That's very much a movement towards being a novel. Although you can get emotions in every story. Definitely. But sometimes it's like somebody reproducing a bit of classical mythology, where a character says, Oh, my my sweet lady, I loved you, but the gods have torn us apart so I'm going to jump off this cliff, and then Eagles will eat my remains. Like yeah, that's an emotion, but it's incredibly cartoony. It's Oh, and I, I spontaneously combusted because I could not wed my my true love.

Hazel

You know, it's quite extreme.

Nick Blake

Yeah. Don't Don't ask me to name one where somebody does that. It's,

Hazel

I'm sure there is one out there.

Nick Blake

You don't get spontaneous combustion in much literature until Dickens. (okay) but

Hazel

who spontaneously combusts in Dickens.

Nick Blake

can't remember offhand, but I know that. I know that it happened.

Hazel

That does sound memorable. x

Nick Blake

You know, it'sThat's how you end a chapter. But.

Hazel

Okay, so I've heard, um, in regards to like, the first novel, I guess that's probably quite ambiguous. But I've, I've read, like sort of theories that it's the Tale of Genji

Nick Blake

is a good candidate. Yeah. I think because, until fairly recently, in, like, in western literary criticism circles, there's been like, has been quite insular and quite Eurocentric about the definition. I think, yeah. Chinese and Japanese novels. I think they do have a good claim to be the first the first proper novels, I think. Yeah, it's not sadly not an area I know enough about really, the those books I'd love to love to go into more detail on that maybe maybe I'll go on a bit of a reading quest and come back when I know more.

Hazel

Well, ironically, the only reason I know about the Tale of Genji is because I read a novel about the author of The Tale of Genji.

Nick Blake

That's one way to learn about it. The, the one that people often point to and say, right, that right there, that is where it begins in the West is Don Quixote, (okay). Which I think is a really interesting point to start because previously to that, you've got your like big romances, the tales of knights and everything like that, in prose form, and in poetry, you get the tale of Roland, King Arthur and Charlemagne, and, you know, Knights real and fake. But all of their deeds are exaggerated, whether they're real or fake. It's always a little bit much. And so I find it really interesting that Don Quixote is because he is the he is a knight who is really influenced by those stories, and they all go to his head. And he goes a bit wrong because of it. That's such a fun place to start to define the novel because that's not necessarily something you can imagine happening before. You can imagine a character in in an ancient Greek story or an early medieval story, maybe thinking that they are a better warrior than they are. You can imagine, as a minor character in Chaucer, being - calling himself Gregor the great but then the - Chaucer describes them as Greg the coward. There's, you can have that kind of difference between somebody's own perception and reality, people get tricked all the time, there's spells being cast and things like that. But in this specific idea that this guy has done the equivalent of watching too much TV. That is such a shift. Because it kind of, you're viewing this person, not just as a character in a story, but as an active consumer of media and consumer of stories, which suggests a kind of interiority to him, that you wouldn't have had before. Specifically a kind of elaborate delusion that can only work if you really delve in deep as Cervantes does and explain his his inner workings.

Hazel

Wow. So I haven't read Don Quixote. So can you? When did it come out?

Nick Blake

That was the that'd be 1605.

Hazel

Okay.  Oh, well, that's, that's actually earlier than I thought.

Nick Blake

Yeah, cuz it was basically coming at the tail end of what has been a couple centuries long trend of a lot of stories of Derring do. But also, it's come after the while after the advent of the of the printing press, which- I don't think you can really do make something that big that isn't like literally the Bible without having a printing press to hand because a lot of people would say, what you're just you're just Cervantes you're just mocking people who like these stories? For five, how many pages 500 pages? And you want me to do that by hand? No, thank you.

Hazel

That's a good point, I guess you can't really go into loads of detail about complex internal motivations across many, many pages, (especially because) without having a main way of reproducing all that,

Nick Blake

especially because you get so many mistakes in there can you imagine making a typo and you're trying to discuss the inner workings of somebody's mind. And then that somebody works off that copy. When they're when it gets sent somewhere else. So yeah there's the kind, there's a couple of different reasons why this period is so good for creating psychological complexity. So there's a lot of theorists of the early modern period that suggest it's when we when we get the concept of the public and the private sphere. I think Stephen Greenblatt has written a lot on that, it's a name I like, saying, It was part of why I said that it's a fun name.

Hazel

It's good name.

Nick Blake

Yeah, you get you get stuff like this is this is a bit bit of a gap. But like Machiavelli, for instance. Like that's talking about private and public sort of presentation, like being just a real exemplification of being a wolf in sheep's clothing or, or just how to betray people as a very, like 101 super quick rundown and Machiavelli. But you know, you can only you can only get there with a sense of that separation i think, and you can only get to the to the like, psychologically mature novel with that sense. So I think Machiavelli and Don Quixote come from comes from that same same impulse to say, we've maybe got more partly we've got more privacy. Now we've got our lives set up differently. You know, we may not necessarily be all sleeping in the same in the same room,

Hazel

you can hide in a bedroom and read a book.

Nick Blake

Yeah. So in a world where you have different bedrooms, as well, you can have Machiavelli and you can have can have the, the novel just like poking around tenuous materialist explanations for these things

Hazel

so kind of where does it go from there?

Nick Blake

Well, you get a mix of things. So, about a century after you get Daniel Defoe who makes Robinson Crusoe in 1719. And

that's you get a lot of stuff kind of like that where there's more. There's more like, plenty of adventurous stuff. There's plenty of quite broad things, but at the same time, you get Aphra. Behn, who was a really interesting playwright and novelist.

Hazel

Yeah, I've heard of her as a playwright, but I didn't realize she also wrote novels.

Nick Blake

Yeah, she wrote this book. Orinoco the black Caesar, which is a very kind of, it's one of those things you only really read now if you're doing an English degree. But I did, so I read it. And it's, it's kind of Yeah, like a very early attempt at writing about non eur- non european people and cultures, which I think does get into some odd areas and gets kind of clumsy about it, let's say but it's another another sign of that, that trajectory, the novel as a place to explore ideas and people so you get that alongside the adventury stuff with defoe and defoe also does things that are a little bit sort of a bit more in between I think. So for instance, you start getting some sort of quite c- comedic novels or or picaresque stuff where it's you know, I'm- a young person is trying to start their life. But in in one book, there might be a woman with- who has a kid young and has to become a courtesan and then it's all of her adventures around town. Or, there's a young man tries to find his fortune and maybe get  waylaid by bandits. But also, there's some stuff in there about about mingling with the nobility and a bit of social commentary. So it's, like all aspects of history. It's not a straight line at all. You get kind of meandering mix of, of big ideas of very earnest sentimental books about not being seduced by a terrible rake. You get Lawrence Stern, who writes a kind of proto, postmodern book in Tristram Shandy. You get all sorts of things up until the Gothic novel and the country house novel which are kind of quite close together in a way because they're the Gothic one is, was a bit more or shameful in some people's eyes. They like to say, Oh, I just found this manuscript of this. This silly dark story, not my fault. If it's if it's cheesy, it's not my fault. It's the manuscript I found it. and with the-

Hazel

Yeah, I do. I do like that. Those are somewhat controversial, especially for like young ladies being obsessed with these graphic novels. And yeah, so there's a bit in Northanger Abbey about which is basically defending the novel as an art form against people who are like, Oh, it's just, it's just like fluffy and ridiculous.

Nick Blake

Yeah, you can tell how long it took for it to get acceptance because it took up until Jane Austen and later for people to go okay. Yes, it's a legitimate literary form.

Hazel

I'm just imagining these like 18th century people like clandestinely reading, reading their novels.

Nick Blake

Yeah not, not classy like watching TV and I (people these days, reading books) Yeah, basically, it's the equivalent of at some point in the 19th century they got HBO and they're like, oh, yeah, okay, maybe this is good. I think it was HBO in this case is like Flaubert or something.

Hazel

Reminds me of. I can't remember where I saw it. But it was. I was watching a documentary and they had a bit of filming people who are queuing up to buy Lady Chatterley's Lover when it was released in the UK in 1960. Like the full version, which, if you haven't heard of it before, is has sex scenes in it, which was a big deal in the mid 20th century. (it's a kissing book) Yeah. And it was like there was a obscenity trial against the publisher. But they were interviewing all these people in the line to get it. And all of them were saying stuff like buying it for a friend. And there was this one young guy who was like, Yes, I'm writing a. I'm doing a course on the modern novel, and I'm buying it for my dissertation. Yeah sure you are

Nick Blake

I don't feel like syllabuses, catch up that quickly. That's amazing. There's one little possibly possibly exaggerated or dubious anecdotes, I heard from a lecture, which was I can't remember if it was this or Ulysses, but it was one of the two sort of big obscenity novels of the 20th century. And some barrister, or something was just asked,

Would you let your servant read this? (yeah) So that's, that's an interesting thing, isn't it? Because basically, novels were kind of tawdry and low arts, and just cheap thrillers and, and things like that. And then they get acceptance, and they kind of get properly codified as, alright, you've got something that's maybe a three act thing. Maybe five acts, and it's quite long, and it has an involved story. And it's a very classy, responsible thing. And then you get into the 20th century, and you get people experimenting with the form and coming out with stuff that's quite, that's quite unusual, and stuff, that's sensitive subject matter. And it's kind of like they have to reckon again, all over again, with with it as an art form, and defend, its worth all over again, just as it's been established, basically. And I don't I don't think until Yeah, I don't think there's really much else that has to fight for its own legitimacy quite so much, quite as much of the, of its history as the novel.

You get people having to argue like, oh, this game is really good. It's got really good. Writing games can be art or you've had to, you've seen people say that about about TV but I think that's kind of shifted quite, quite quickly in favor of like, Yeah, okay. Maybe, you know, people can say, all right.

So sometimes maybe some of the upper echelons. So they'd be like like Sopranos, The Wire or HalfLife, sure, that can be art. And we're kind of happy to move along.

But with the novel that's kind of like having to make those over and over for about 1000 years, before somebody says, Yeah, okay, maybe, maybe these are valid forms of expression. And

Hazel

I guess every time there's sort of a new form of it it's like, kind of has to has to become respected as its own thing. I'm thinking particularly of like the development of fantasy as a genre.

Nick Blake

Oh, yeah, that's its own whole battle, isn't it? genre fiction?

Hazel

Yeah. Yeah. And yes, I find like different genres of novels, which and so now we've got like, literary fiction, which is like, Okay, this is the classy novel. And this is our high art, and then things that are just meant to be enjoyable. And that's artistic.

Nick Blake

Yes it's interesting, what gets called the literary novel when, really, unless it's a piece of like, post modernism, or a highly you know, something very conceptual. That to me, I look at it and I think, well, that's just, that's just realism. That's just the realist novel. And I'm fine with that. I love love a realist novel, because it's one of those things where defining things that would be mundane or smaller stakes, and making them matter that's a really good skill. But it's a really weird label literary fiction, because it denigrates the others and it doesn't tell you what the thing actually is.

Hazel

Yeah, like what's the fiction about? I Want to know

Nick Blake

but to wrap up my thoughts in the future I think the novel will be edible

Hazel

You sure that hasn't already happened

Nick Blake

well, you can eat most things once

Hazel

technically I have to say I think that the absolute peak of like literary art is the choose your own adventure novel.

Nick Blake

That is the culmination

Hazel

that's it like it doesn't get better

Nick Blake

it does not

D&Daniel

Probably bad podcast plug

Nick Blake

What is the local larder this week?

Hazel

yeah, so I am going to talk I'm just like switching my brain from like, trying to sound fancy and talking about literature to foods Yeah, I was gonna talk about elderflower, actually, cuz while this is me segueing while you're curled up with your novel, outside in the sunshine, you might like to enjoy a nice cool refreshing drink. And that follows on nicely to elderflower. So I'm just gonna talk a bit about elderflower as a flavor, because I think it's fairly popular across Europe. And I know that it's used in cocktails as well. Quite often, but yeah, I've not seen it so much in other places. So I mean, I don't know please let me know if you're listening and you're in a place that is not in Europe, and you have elderflower flavored things please let me know what they are. That'd be awesome. But yeah, I was like, elderflower cordial. elderflower wine or champagne. And I've even had elderflower fritters which are delicious.

Nick Blake

Oh, you could fritter anything. Technically

Hazel

You can put anything in batter and fry it. But you probably shouldn't but yeah, they were really good because there was it went all it was like a thinner, slightly thinner batter and it was just like the elderflower is really light and like frothy and then it's like crunchy batter and very tasty. Anyway. The elder tree comes from the Saxon Word Eld and it's been it's been a tree that has grown like across Europe for millennia. And it's been it's had many medicinal uses over the years. But you start to see recipes for the elderflower as like a flavoring in cookbooks and things from the like 17th 18th century. So, Hannah Glass's the art of cookery made plain and simple has a recipe for elderflower wine. And there Yeah, it's generally it's a very like country flavor. I think because elder trees are really common and hedgerows and woodlands and like you know, all around like this, it's really easy to gather and make things from so it just, it just smells like summer to me. Because the elder trees flower at the beginning of summer, and it's just such a beautiful smell. And like normally we make elderflower code cordial about time, which is delicious. Just on its own, or like in a gin and tonic. Really good. Yeah. So yeah, just really associated with summer which is why it sort of came into my head now. And I have actually made elderflower wine. And it was really good. And one of the books I have on country wines is stated the elderflowers like, the only one that is as good as grape wine, but

Nick Blake

I've heard quite high praise for elderflower wine as as a country wine. Yeah, I think viticulture is it's just one of those things where yeah, like changing the grapes makes a lot of difference to the, the flavor and there's not really a way to replicate that outside of getting those grapes and doing it just like that.

Hazel

Yeah, and I think with the grape wines, you don't really have to add a lot of like sugar or extra stuff because of that. It's kind of in the grapes already. Whereas the a lot of the country wines are more like flavoring. The, the alcohol that's being created by sort of added sugar, but anyway, it tastes nice. It's a nice little light wine. Yeah, yeah. It's quite fun to make. And it smells so good when you just have a whole basket of elderflowers. It's delicious.

Yeah, so

I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I would really like to know if there's any other elderflower flavored related things out there, so please do let us know if that's the case case.

Nick Blake

Send us in elderflower ideas and also any country wine ideas you have because I edit the show so I'll get to I'll get to hear them if they're read out.

Hazel

Yeah, that'd be awesome. Oh, how's your brewing going by the way

Nick Blake

pretty good. I've been enjoying the fruits of my labor recently. I've the honey bear has aged nicely which is I think it's come up on the podcast before it's a nice nice simple beer with mostly honey a little bit of hops to make it not actually mead

some kind of like a nice very sweet IPA.  (sounds good)

it's really good. And because I've had trouble getting the kind of level of fizz right, especially because making something bubbly and sealing it up is yet in the danger zone there. I've actually managed to get about the right amount with this because what we did was we got it from a book of like called country wines and beers. And we halved the amount of sugar it said to put in. So that's ended up being about the right amount for like, a nice, very subtle fizz.

Hazel

Okay.

Nick Blake

The last thing you want is to open a bottle and have it explode everywhere as - as I've had that before.

Hazel

Yeah, absolutely. And you've just reminded me actually of the elderflower champagne, or sparkling wine, I guess, legally. Which apparently my granny used to make. And I've always wanted to give it a go. I think I did try. But it didn't really, I didn't really get any fizz. But apparently the trick is to put an extra teaspoon full of sugar in when you bottle it, so that it just like, keeps the fermentation just just going and you get the fizz.

Nick Blake

And that's a teaspoon in per like, what?

Hazel

Like per bottle.

Nick Blake

Okay, we're talking like wine bottle size. Oh.  (I think so) Okay, good. Because otherwise, that's a lot of sugar.

Hazel

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Um, I think I'm gonna wrap it up there. I think we were on quite a good time. So, thank you very much for talking about the novel, anytime. And ah, Liz normally remembers all the things I'm not sure if I can remember them as well as they can, but I'll give it a go. If you would like to send us your favorite novels, or your favorite elderflower recipes, you can do that at breadandthreadpodcast@gmail.com. You can find us at bread and thread on Twitter, where we will have any pictures of things we talked about in the podcast, and teasers for upcoming episodes, retweets if you want to see the things that we retweet. We also have a YouTube bread and thread which has audio versions of our podcast episodes, which some people prefer. We've got a patron which is also bread and thread where we will have monthly recipes and a Discord server.  And then we have Tumblr, which is unsurprisingly also thread and thread. We get pretty wild over there. So yeah, come see

Nick Blake

it's it's convenient, spread and thread all the way down. It's like an incredibly weird rope.

Hazel

Made of bread. Follow the bread rope.

Nick Blake

It's how you escape from bakery jail.

Hazel

Thank you very much for listening. We will see you next time.