Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) by John Lyly

Book Review
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
 by John Lyly

   Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit is a strong contender, along with several other pre-18th century selections from the original 1001 Books list for "least pleasant read."   From what I'm able to gather- Euphues is an example of  humorous prose writing that was a la mode in the 16th century.  Nearly every sentence is a quote from some earlier, almost entirely non English, source.  Erasmus is a favorite- he wrote in latin, but Lyly also draws directly from what was known of Roman and Greek literature after the Renaissance.

  The copy I read had footnotes for nearly every sentence, sometimes multiple footnotes from a single sentence.   There is some kind of plot, based around Euphues and his life and times, with an emphasis on correspondence. Later chapters consist of letters directly modeled on the letters of the stoics of the late Roman Empire.

  It is all quite tedious, and no surprise it was dropped from the first revision, replaced by Tirant lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell from 1490.  Tirant lo Blanc is an example of chivalric romance, which is a category which has been excluded from the "history of the novel" narrative promulgated by English language academics in the 20th century.