While Bakhtin does make reference to proto-novels in antiquity, he dates the rise of the modern novel with the Renaissance and suggests that it developed then precisely because of a new temporal perspective: man had become conscious of the present not only as a continuation of the past, but also as a ‘heroic and new beginning’. This allowed the novel, a genre that was concerned with the possibilities of the present, to flourish. The novel , therefore, ‘ the only genre born of this new world and in total affinity with it ’ (Bakhtin 1981:7), i.e. the most apt form for literary expression in the modern world.
While Bakhtin does make reference to proto-novels in antiquity, he places the rise of the modern novel in the Renaissance and suggests that it developed then precisely because of a new temporal perspective: man had become conscious of the present not only as a continuation of the past, but also as a ‘heroic and new beginning’. This allowed the novel, a genre that was concerned with the possibilities of the present, to flourish. The novel was " the only genre born of this new world and in total affinity with it " (Bakhtin 1981:7), and was therefore the most apt form for literary expression in the modern world.
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