Романното в ранната естетика на Хосе Ортега-и-Гасет
The Principle of the Novel in the Early Esthetics of José Ortega-y-Gasset

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses Ortega’s concept of the novel genesis, elaborated in „Meditations on Quixote“. The analysis includes: Ortega’s approach in understanding the novel as an absolutely new genre; the idea of the novel’s constitution as a counterpoise to the epic; prospective death of the novel; the participation of German Romanticism in forming Ortega’s concept and the analogies between this concept and some of the main ideas in Bakhtin’s novel doctrine. The novel is treated by the Spanish philosopher as the aesthetic discovery of Modern times. Antiques, chivalrous, adventures novels are understand as a quasi-novel. When searching for signs that constitute the novel as an essentially different genre, Ortega used the binary approach, focused on the opposition of the epic and the novel, respectively, on their different „episteme“. Novel and Epic are compared on three criteria: temporal orientation, human image and modes of narration. Exemplum crucis in Ortega’s understanding of Novelism is about the aesthetic capacity of the ‘realism’, i.e. the manner which the present has been embodied the novel.

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