Barthes and Fuks: in search of a history (of novel)

Abstract

In Writing degree zero, 1953, Roland Barthes outlines his introduction to the history of modern literary forms. To point out the connection between profound history and formal history and refusing the traditional literary categories, Barthes launches the literary object into a reality with thickness, assuming history as a condition of literary writing, but without rely on it as a method. Julián Fuks, faced with the impossibility of writing a history of the novel, will seek ways to traverse the confluence of ideas around the notion of novel and its writing. In Romance: History of an idea, published in 2021, Fuks gives voice to some novelists and comments on the moments when the writers themselves approach what the novel was or should be. In this text aims to show how these two writers sought to, through the writing of the novel or the profusion of ideas around this “genre” varied and multifaceted, assume a history (formal or abstract) in which the novel is inscripted.