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AtlasShruggedCompanies

AtlasShruggedCompanies

Companies in Atlas Shrugged, the Ayn Rand novel, generally, are divided into two groups, these that are operated by sympathetic characters are given the name of the owner, while companies operated by evil or incompetent characters are given generic names. In Atlas Shrugged men who give their names to their companies all become Strikers in due time.

Amalgamated Switch and Signal

A company run by Mr. Mowen and located in Connecticut. They have supplied Taggart Transcontinental for generations. Dagny Taggart orders Rearden Metal switches from them. Amalgamated Switch and Signal appears in section 171.

Associated Steel

Associated Steel is the company owned by Orren Boyle. The company was started with just a few hundred-thousand dollars of Boyle's own money, and hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants. Boyle used this money to buy out his competitors, and now relies on influence peddling and political favors to run his business. Associated Steel is mentioned in sections 111, 114, 131 and 171.

Ayers Music Publishing Company

Ayers Music Publishing Company is the publisher of the music of Richard Halley. Dagny Taggart contacts Mr. Ayers to inquire as to the existence of Halley's Fifth Concerto. Ayers Music Publishing Company is mentioned in section 114.

Barton and Jones

The company, located in Denver, that supplies food for the workers rebuilding the Rio Norte Line. They go bankrupt in the middle of the project. Barton and James is mentioned in section 171.

d'Anconia Copper

A copper and mining company founded by Sebastian d'Anconia in Argentina during the time of the Inquisition. Each man who ran the company saw it grow by 10% in his lifetime, so by the time Francisco d'Anconia heads the company it is the largest in the world. His dream, from childhood, is to increase the size of the company by 100%. d'Anconia Copper is mentioned in sections 152 and 171.

Hammond Motors

A car company in Colorado. They make the best cars on the market until the founder disappears. Hank Rearden buys a Hammond on his trip to Colorado in section 171.

Incorporated Tool

A company that is contracted to deliver drill heads to Taggart Transcontinental but who fail to do this. It is mentioned in section 171.

Phoenix-Durango

The Phoenix-Durango is an old, small railroad located in the Southwest run by Dan Conway that has been insignificant for most of its existence. However, the Phoenix-Durango grows rapidly when Ellis Wyatt revives the economy of Colorado and Taggart Transcontinental's Rio Norte Line fails to service Wyatt adequately. Later, James Taggart conspires to get the Phoenix-Durango driven out of Colorado with the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule. The Phoenix-Durango is mentioned in sections 111, 114, 131 (alluded to), 132, 145, 146, 147 and 152.

Rearden Coal

A business founded by Hank Rearden prior to the founding of Rearden Steel. It is mentioned in section 121.

Rearden Limestone

A business founded by Hank Rearden prior to the founding of Rearden Steel. It is mentioned in section 121.

Rearden Ore

The first business founded by Hank Rearden. It is mentioned in section 121.

Rearden Steel

A company founded by Hank Rearden about ten years prior to the start of the story in the novel. Rearden bought an abandoned steel mill in Philadelphia at a time when all the experts thought that such a venture would be hopeless. He turned it into the most reliable and profitable steel company in the country. As Dagny Taggart struggles to save Taggart Transcontinental, she becomes increasingly dependent on Rearden Steel. Rearden Steel is mentioned in sections 111, 114, 121, 131 (alluded to), 161 and 162.

Summit Casting

A company in Illinois under contract to deliver rail spikes to Taggart Transcontinental. They go bankrupt before they can deliver, prompting Dagny Taggart to fly to Chicago and buy the company to get it started again. Summit Casting is mentioned in section 171.

Taggart Transcontinental

The fictional railroad run by Dagny Taggart. Her commitment to the railroad creates one of the book's major conflicts. Taggart Transcontinental was founded by Nathaniel Taggart who lived three generations (or so) prior to Dagny's generation. It was built without any grants, loans, or favors from the government, and was the last railroad that was still owned and controlled by its founder's descendants. Its motto is, From Ocean to Ocean. In reality, no railroad would have been allowed to be built without government involvement, as railroads are impossibly valuable strategic assets, able to move large amounts of materiel at minimal cost. The 'flagship' of Taggart Transcontinental is the Taggart Comet which runs from New York to San Francisco, and which has never been late.

United Locomotive Works

An incompetent company that is supposed to deliver Diesel engines to Taggart Transcontinental. The order is delayed in perpetuity, and the president of the company refuses to ever give a straight answer as to why this is so. The United Locomotive Works is mentioned in sections 133 and 141.

Wyatt Oil

The oil company run by Ellis Wyatt. Wyatt's father had squeezed a living out of the oil fields in Colorado, but when Ellis Wyatt took over the business took off. He discovered a technique for extracting oil from wells that had been abandoned as dried up. The success of Wyatt Oil that followed this discovery suddenly and unexpectedly turned Colorado into the leading economy in the country. Wyatt Oil traditionally relied on Taggart Transcontinental's Rio Norte Line to ship its oil. But when that company could not grow fast enough to keep up with the booming Colorado economy, Wyatt started using the small but well-managed Phoenix-Durango instead. This prompted James Taggart to make deals with his friends to drive the Phoenix-Durango out of Colorado. Afterwards, Dagny Taggart has to rebuild the Rio Norte Line so it can supply transportation to Wyatt Oil - if she fails, the economy of Colorado, and of the whole country, could collapse. Wyatt Oil is mentioned in sections 111, 132 and 171. Category:Atlas Shrugged Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

, best known for her philosophy of Objectivism]] Ayn Rand (February 2 1905–March 6 1982; first name pronounced (IPA) (rhymes with 'mine')), born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, was best known for her philosophy of Objectivism and her novels "We the Living", Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy and her fiction both emphasize, above all, her concepts of individualism, rational egoism ("rational self-interest"), and capitalism. Believing government has a legitimate but relatively minimal role in a free society, she was not an anarchist, but a minarchist (though she did not use the term). Her novels were based upon the projection of the Randian hero, a man whose ability and independence causes conflict with the masses, but who perseveres nevertheless to achieve his values. Rand viewed this hero as the ideal and made it the express goal of her literature to showcase such heroes. She believed: #That man must choose his values and actions by reason; #That the individual has a right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing self to others nor others to self; and #That no one has the right to seek values from others by physical force, or impose ideas on others by physical force.

Biography

Early life

Rand was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and was the eldest of three daughters of a Jewish family. Her parents were agnostic and largely non-observant. From an early age, she displayed a strong interest in literature and films. She started writing screenplays and novels from the age of seven. Her mother undertook to teach her French and subscribed to a magazine featuring stories for boys, where Rand found her first childhood hero: Cyrus Paltons, an Indian army officer in a Rudyard Kipling-style story called "The Mysterious Valley". Throughout her youth, she read the novels of Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas and other Romantic writers, and expressed a passionate enthusiasm toward the Romantic movement as a whole. She discovered Victor Hugo at the age of thirteen, and fell deeply in love with his novels. Later, she would cite him as her favorite novelist and the greatest novelist of world literature. She studied philosophy and history at the University of Petrograd. Her major literary discoveries in university were the works of Edmond Rostand, Friedrich Schiller and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She admired Rostand for his richly romantic imagination and Schiller for his grand, heroic scale. She admired Dostoevsky for his sense of drama and his intense moral judgments, but was deeply against his philosophy and his sense of life. She continued to write short stories and screenplays and wrote sporadically in her diary, which contained intensely anti-Soviet ideas. She also encountered the philosophical ideas of Nietzsche, and loved his exaltation of the heroic and independent individual in Thus Spoke Zarathustra; nevertheless she was strongly critical of his philosophy, going so far as to attack it in the introductions of her novels. Her greatest influence by far is Aristotle, especially his work Organon (Logic). She considered him the greatest philosopher ever. She then entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screenwriting; in late 1925, however, she was granted a visa to visit American relatives. She arrived in the United States in February 1926, at the age of twenty-one. After a brief stay with her relatives in Chicago, she resolved never to return to the Soviet Union, and set out for Hollywood to become a screenwriter. She then changed her name to "Ayn Rand". There is a story told that she named herself after the Remington Rand typewriter, but recent evidence has proved that this is not the case. She stated that her first name, 'Ayn', was an adaptation of the name of a Finnish writer. This may have been the Finnish-Estonian author Aino Kallas. Others have suggested that her name is derived from the South African rand, but the rand was not used until 1961. Michael Berliner and Richard Ralston, working for the Ayn Rand Institute and with access to Miss Rand’s records, have hypothesized an explanation derived from the appearance of Russian script of "Rozenbaum" (depicted [http://arname.davidhayes.net/ here] with an animation). A further refinement of this interpretation is to make "Rand" from the letters Rznb (Рзнб), again using script letters rather than type. The superiority of this method allows the name to be transformed entirely from Rozenbaum (Розенбаум) without changing the order of the letters, by: splitting: "Розенб аум" reversing: "аум Розенб" dropping two vowels: "аум Рзнб" At that point, the script version is very reminiscent of the name Ayn Rand. Image:ayn_rand_name.gif

Major works

Initially, Rand struggled in Hollywood and took odd jobs to pay her basic living expenses. While working as an extra on Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings, she intentionally bumped into an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor, who caught her eye. The two were married in 1929. In 1931, Rand became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Her first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay Red Pawn in 1932 to Universal Studios. Rand then wrote the play The Night of January 16th in 1934, which was highly successful, and published two novels, We the Living (1936), and Anthem (1938). The two novels failed to gain any significant financial/critical success. She was up against The Red Decade in America, and Anthem did not even find a publisher in the United States; it was first published in England. Besides that, Rand had still not perfected her literary style and the novels cannot be considered fully representative. Without Rand's knowledge or permission, We The Living was made into a pair of films, Noi vivi and Addio, Kira in 1942 by Scalara Films, Rome. The films were nearly censored by the Italian government under Benito Mussolini, but they were allowed to be featured because the novel they were based upon was ostensibly anti-Soviet. The films were successful and the public easily realised that it was as much against Fascism as it was against Communism, and the government banned it quickly thereafter. These films were re-edited into a new version which was approved by Rand and re-released as We the Living in 1986. Rand's first major professional success came with her best-selling novel The Fountainhead (1943). She took seven years to write it. The novel was rejected by twelve publishers, who thought it was too intellectual and opposed to the mainstream of American thought, and that there would be no public for it. It was finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company publishing house, thanks mainly to a member of the editorial board, Archibald Ogden, who praised the book in the highest terms and finally prevailed. Despite these initial struggles The Fountainhead was a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial security. The theme of The Fountainhead is "individualism and collectivism in man's soul". It features the lives of five main characters. The hero, Howard Roark, is Rand's ideal, a noble soul par excellence, an architect who is firmly and serenely devoted to his own ideals and believes that no man should copy the style of another in any field, and especially in architecture. All the other characters in the novel demand the renunciation of his values with varying degrees of intensity, but Roark maintains his integrity. A most interesting feature of Roark is that he does this unlike traditional heroes who launch into long and passionate monologues about their integrity and the unfairness of the world; Roark, by contrast, does it with a disdainful, almost contemptous taciturnity and laconicism. Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was published in 1957, becoming an international bestseller. Atlas Shrugged is often seen as Rand's most complete statement of the Objectivist philosophy in any of her works of fiction. In its appendix, she offered this summary: :"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." The theme of Atlas Shrugged is "The role of man's mind in society". Rand upheld the industrialist as one of the most admirable members of any society and fiercely opposed the popular resentment accorded to industrialists. This led her to envision a novel wherein the industrialists of America go on strike and retreat to a mountainous hideaway. The American economy and its society in general slowly start to collapse. The government responds by increasing the already stifling controls on industrial concerns. The novel, despite having a political theme at its centre, deals with issues as complex and divergent as sex, music, medicine, and human ability. Along with Nathaniel Branden, his wife Barbara, and others including Alan Greenspan and Leonard Peikoff, (jokingly designated "The Collective"), Rand launched the Objectivist movement to promote her philosophy.

The Objectivist movement

Main article: The Objectivist movement In 1950 Rand moved to New York City, where in 1951 she met the young psychology student Nathaniel Branden [http://www.nathanielbranden.com], who had read her book, The Fountainhead, at the age of 14. Branden, then 19, enjoyed discussing Rand's emerging Objectivist philosophy with her. Together, Branden and some of his other friends formed a group that they dubbed the Ayn Rand Collective, which included some participation by future Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. After several years, Rand and Branden's friendly relationship blossomed into a romantic affair, despite the fact that both were married at the time. This affair was accepted by their spouses but led to the separation and then divorce of Nathaniel Branden from his wife. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through both her fiction [http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_fiction] and non-fiction [http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_nonfiction] works, and by giving talks at several east-coast universities, largely through the Nathaniel Branden Institute ("the NBI") which Branden had established to promote her philosophy. After a convoluted series of separations, Rand abruptly ended her relationship with both Nathaniel Branden and his wife, Barbara Branden, in 1968 when she learned of Nathaniel Branden's affair with Patrecia Scott (this later affair did not overlap chronologically with the earlier Branden/Rand affair). Rand refused to have any further dealings with the NBI. She then published a letter in "The Objectivist" announcing her repudiation of Branden for various reasons, including dishonesty, but did not mention their affair or her role in the schism. The two never reconciled, and Branden remained a persona non grata in the Objectivist movement. 1968 honoring Rand.]] Barbara Branden presented an account of the breakup of the affair in her book, The Passion of Ayn Rand. She describes the encounter between Nathaniel and Rand, saying that Rand slapped him numerous times, and denounced him in these words: "If you have an ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health — you'll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve any potency, you'll know it's a sign of still worse moral degradation!" Conflicts continued in the wake of the break with Branden and the subsequent collapse of the NBI. Many of her closest "Collective" friends began to part ways, and during the late 70's, her activities within the formal Objectivist movement began to decline, a situation which increased after the death of her husband in 1979. One of her final projects was work on a television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982 in New York City, years after having successfully battled cancer, and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. Valhalla, New York

Philosophical influences

Rand rejected virtually all other philosophical schools. She acknowledged a shared intellectual lineage with Aristotle and John Locke, and more generally with the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment and Age of Reason. She occasionally remarked with approval on specific philosophical positions of, e.g., Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Aquinas. She seems also to have respected the American rationalist Brand Blanshard. However, she regarded most philosophers as at best incompetent and at worst downright evil. She singled out Immanuel Kant as the most influential of the latter sort. Nonetheless, there are connections between Rand's views and those of other philosophers. She acknowledged that she had been influenced at an early age by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Though she later repudiated his thought, and reprinted her first novel, We The Living, with some wording changes in 1959, her own thought grew out of critical interaction with it. Generally, her political thought is in the tradition of classical liberalism. She expressed qualified enthusiasm for the economic thought of Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt. Though not mentioned as an influence by her specifically, parallels between her works and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance do exist. Later Objectivists, such as Richard Salsman, have claimed that Rand's economic theories are implicitly more supportive of the doctrines of Jean-Baptiste Say, though Rand herself was likely not acquainted with his work.

Politics and House Committee on Un-American Activities testimony

Rand's political views were radically pro-capitalist, anti-statist, and anti-communist. Her writings praised above all the human individual and the creative genius of which one is capable. She exalted what she saw as the heroic American values of egoism and individualism. Rand also had a strong dislike for mysticism, religion, and compulsory charity (forced extraction), all of which she believed helped foster a crippling culture of resentment towards individual human happiness and success. Rand detested many prominent liberal and conservative politicians of her time, even including prominent anti-communist crusaders like Presidents Harry S. Truman and Ronald Reagan and Senators Hubert H. Humphrey and Joseph McCarthy. In 1947, during the Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/huac.html]. Rand's testimony involved analysis of the 1943 film Song of Russia. While many believe that Ayn Rand disclosed the names of members of the Communist Party in the U.S., thus exposing them to blacklisting, her testimony consisted entirely of comments regarding the disparity between her experiences in the Soviet Union and the fanciful portrayal of it in the film. Rand argued that the movie grossly misrepresented the socioeconomic conditions in the Soviet Union. She told the committee that the film presented life in the USSR as being much better than it actually was. Apparently this 1943 film was intentional wartime propaganda by U.S. patriots, trying to put their Soviet allies in World War II under the best possible light. After the HUAC hearings, when Ayn Rand was asked about her feelings on the effectiveness of their investigations, she described the process as "futile."

Legacy

Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed on her casket. [http://www.eckerd.edu/aspec/writers/atlas_shrugged.htm] In 1985, Leonard Peikoff, a surviving member of "The Collective" and Ayn Rand's designated heir, established "The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism". The Institute has since registered the name Ayn Rand as a trademark, despite Rand's desire that her name never be used to promote the philosophy she developed. Rand expressed her wish to keep her name and the philosophy of Objectivism separate to ensure the survival of her ideas. Another schism in the movement occurred in 1989, when Objectivist David Kelley wrote an article called "A Question of Sanction," [http://www.wetheliving.com/boston/sanction.html] in which he defended his choice to speak to non-Objectivist libertarian groups. Kelley wrote that Objectivism was not a "closed system" and should engage with other philosophies. Peikoff, in an article for The Intellectual Activist called "Fact and Value" [http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_f-v], argued that Objectivism is, indeed, a closed system, and that truth and moral goodness are intrinsically related. Peikoff expelled Kelley from his movement, whereupon Kelley founded The Institute for Objectivist Studies (now known as "The Objectivist Center"). Rand and Objectivism are less well known outside North America, though there are pockets of interest in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and her novels are reported to be very popular in India ([http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/000058.php]). Her work has had little effect on academic philosophy, for her followers are mostly (with some notable exceptions) drawn from the non-academic world.

Controversy

Rand's views are controversial. Religious and socially conservative thinkers have criticized her atheism. Many adherents and practicioners of continental philosophy would criticize her celebration of rationality and self-interest. Her extremely pro-capitalism political views have not been positively received within the American academy. Within the dominant philosophical movement in the English-speaking world, analytic philosophy, Rand's work has been mostly ignored. No leading research university in this tradition considers Rand or Objectivism to be an important philosophical specialty or research area, as is documented by Brian Leiter's report at [http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/]. Some academics, however, are trying to bring Rand's work into the mainstream. For instance, there is an Ayn Rand Society [http://www.aynrandsociety.org/], founded in 1987, affiliated with the American Philosophical Association. A notable exception to the general lack of attention paid to Rand in the analytic community is the essay "On the Randian Argument" by Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick, which appears in his collection Socratic Puzzles. Nozick's own libertarian political conclusions are similar to Rand's, but his essay is critical of her foundational argument in ethics, which claims that one's own life is, for each individual, the only ultimate value because it makes all other values possible. Nozick says that to make this argument sound, Rand still needs to explain why someone could not rationally prefer the state of eventually dying and having no values. Thus, he argues, her attempt to deduce the morality of selfishness is essentially an instance of assuming the conclusion or begging the question and that her solution to David Hume's famous is-ought problem is unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, Nozick did respect Rand as an author and noted that he found her books enjoyable and thought-provoking. Rand has sometimes been viewed with suspicion for her practice of presenting her philosophy in fiction and non-fiction books aimed at a general audience rather than publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Rand's defenders note that she is part of a long tradition of authors who wrote philosophically rich fiction — including Dante, John Milton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Albert Camus, and that other philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre presented their philosophies in both fictional and non-fictional forms. Other critics argue that Rand’s idealistic philosophy and her Romantic literary style are not applicable to the inhabited world. In particular, these critics claim that Rand's novels are made up of unrealistic and one-dimensional characters. They criticize the portrayal of the Objectivist heroes as incredibly intelligent, unencumbered by doubt, wealthy, and free of flaws, in contrast to the frequent portrayal of the antagonists as weak, pathetic, full of uncertainty, and lacking in imagination and talent. Defenders of Rand point out counterexamples to these criticisms: neither Eddie Willers nor Cherryl Taggart (both positive characters) is especially gifted or intelligent, but both are characters of dignity and respect; Leo Kovalensky suffers enormously due to his inability to cope with the brutality and banality of communism; Andrei Taganov dies after realizing his philosophical errors; Dominique Francon is initially bitterly unhappy because she believes evil is powerful; and Dagny Taggart thinks that she is capable of saving the world alone. Two of her main protagonists, Howard Roark and John Galt, did not begin life as rich. Though Rand believed that, under capitalism, valuable contributions will routinely be rewarded by wealth, she certainly did not think that wealth made a person virtuous. In fact, she presents various vicious apparatchiks and plutocrats who use statism to enrich themselves. Moreover, Hank Rearden is exploited because of his social naïveté. As for the purportedly weak and pathetic villains, Rand's defenders point out that Ellsworth Toohey is represented as being a great strategist and communicator from an early age, and Dr. Robert Stadler is a brilliant scientist. Rand herself replied to these literary criticisms (and in advance of much of them) with her essay "The Goal of My Writing" (1963). There, and in other essays collected in her book The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature (2nd rev. ed. 1975), Rand makes it clear that her goal is to project her vision of an ideal man: not man as he is, but man as he might and ought to be.

Bibliography

Fiction

- Night of January 16th (1934)
- We The Living (1936)
- Anthem (1938)
- The Fountainhead (1943)
- Atlas Shrugged (1957)

Posthumous fiction

- Three Plays (2005)

Nonfiction

- For the New Intellectual (1961)
- The Virtue of Selfishness (with Nathaniel Branden) (1964)
- Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (with Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen) (1966)
- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967)
- The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
- The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
- Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)

Posthumous nonfiction

- The Early Ayn Rand (edited and with commentary by Leonard Peikoff) (1984)
- The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (edited by Leonard Peikoff; additional essays by Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz) (1989)
- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology second edition (edited by Harry Binswanger; additional material by Leonard Peikoff) (1990)
- Letters of Ayn Rand (edited by Michael S. Berliner) (1995)
- Journals of Ayn Rand (edited by David Harriman) (1997)
- Ayn Rand's Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors (edited by Robert Mayhew) (1998)
- The Ayn Rand Column: Written for the Los Angeles Times (edited by Peter Schwartz) (1998)
- Russian Writings on Hollywood (edited by Michael S. Berliner) (1999)
- Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (expanded edition of The New Left; edited and with additional essays by Peter Schwartz) (1999)
- The Art of Fiction (edited by Tore Boeckmann) (2000)
- The Art of Nonfiction (edited by Robert Mayhew) (2001)
- The Objectivism Research CD-ROM (collection of most of Rand's works in CD-ROM format) (2001)
- Ayn Rand Answers (2005)

References

In addition to Rand's own works (listed above), the following references discuss Rand's life and/or literary work. References that discuss her philosophy can be found in the bibliography of work on Objectivism.
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External links

General information
- [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq.html Ayn Rand FAQ]
- [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq-notes.html Ayn Rand FAQ-notes]
- [http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_ayn_rand_faq_index2 Frequently Asked Questions on Ayn Rand]
- [http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/r/rand.htm "Ayn Rand" entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
- [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq.html#Q0/ Rand's biography]
- [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/ Objectivism Reference Center] Organizations promoting Ayn Rand's philosophy
- [http://www.aynrand.org/ The Ayn Rand Institute]
- [http://www.ariwatch.com/ ARI Watch]
- [http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ The Objectivist Center]
- [http://www.capitalismcenter.org/ The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism] Articles
- [http://chronicle.com/colloquy/99/rand/background.htm Ayn Rand Has Finally Caught the Attention of Scholars] by Jeff Sharlet
- [http://www.mclemee.com/id39.html The Heirs of Ayn Rand by Scott McLemee] An article published in Lingua Franca which covers the arc of her publishing career, while alive and posthomous, as well as the continuing scholarship.
- [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n23/turn03_.html As Astonishing as Elvis by Jenny Turner] Essay review of Ayn Rand by Jeff Britting Articles critical of Ayn Rand
- [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by Murray Rothbard] Written in 1972, this was the first piece of Rand revisionism from the libertarian standpoint.
- [http://www.2think.org/02_2_she.shtml The Unlikeliest Cult in History by Michael Shermer]
- [http://world.std.com/~mhuben/critobj.html "Extensive list of critical essays that Objectivists must answer"]
- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_work_on_Objectivism] "The works of numerous philosophers that are critical of Rand's Objectivism are included at this internal link #11" Rand's associates
- [http://www.leonardpeikoff.com/ Leonard Peikoff's website]
- [http://www.barbarabranden.com/ Barbara Branden's website]
- [http://www.nathanielbranden.com/ Nathaniel Branden's website] Online groups and blogs
- [http://www.TIADaily.com/ TIA Daily] — Daily news and commentary from the Objectivist perspective by e-mail
- [http://www.DrHurd.com/ Dr. Michael J. Hurd, psychologist] — The Daily Dose of Reason: psychology, life coaching and comments on cultural/political topics from an Objectivist perspective — also, The Living Resources Newsletter and Dr. Hurd's publications
- [http://www.theatlasphere.com/ Ayn Rand Admirers] — The Atlasphere: Member directory, dating service, columns, and news for admirers of Rand's novels
- [http://www.objectivismonline.net/ ObjectivismOnline.Net] — Contains [http://forum.objectivismonline.net/ forums], blogs, essays, chat room, and a [http://wiki.objectivismonline.net wiki on Objectivism]
- [http://www.solopassion.com Sense of Life Objectivists] — Online columns and discussion, by and for Objectivists - hosted by Lindsay Perigo
- [http://forums.4aynrandfans.com The Forum for Ayn Rand Fans]
- [http://www.objectivistblogs.com Objectivist Blogs] — A list of Rand-influenced bloggers
- [http://www.hblist.com Harry Binswanger List] — E-mail-based discussion group
- [http://randex.org/ Randex] — Index of online media references to Ayn Rand and Objectivism
- [http://www.objectivism.net Objectivism.net] — Ayn Rand on CD-ROM, and good links
- [http://wiki.objectivismonline.net/ The Objectivism Wiki]
- [http://www.aynrandstudies.com The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies] — Contains abstracts of articles, author bios, links to several articles, and submission guidelines.
- [http://www.starshipaurora.com/aynrand100.html Ayn Rand 100 Tribute] — includes reference to a tribute album, "Concerto of Deliverance", inspired by Rand's words describing such music. Rand's writing and speeches
- [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/anthem/complete.html Anthem] — The complete text of the novel, which has fallen into the public domain
- [http://www.ayn-rand.com/ayn-rand-atlas-shrugged.asp Atlas Shrugged ] — Book outline
- [http://www.ayn-rand.com/ayn-rand-fountainhead.asp The Fountainhead] — Book outline
- [http://www.ayn-rand.com/ayn-rand-we-the-living.asp We The Living] — Book outline
- [http://www.tracyfineart.com/usmc/philosophy_who_needs_it.htm "Philosophy: Who Needs It?"] — Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York - March 6, 1974
- [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/huac.html Rand's HUAC testimony] — Transcript
- [http://www.libertyhaven.org/bookstore/B00004LC7UAMUS169912.shtml We the Living] — Video outline
- [http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/rand.asp Rand featured on C-Span's "American Writers"] — RealVideo discussions on Rand's writing
- Ayn Rand Art
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Novel

A novel (from French nouvelle, "new") is an extended fictional narrative in prose. Down into the 18th century, the word referred specifically to short fictions of love and intrigue as opposed to romances—epic-length works about love and adventures. Having become one of the major literary genres over the past 200 years the novel is today the object of discussions demanding artistic merits, a specific literary style and a deeper meaning than a true story of the same content could claim to have. __TOC__

Novel/Romance: Unstable Words

One meaning of the English word novel has remained stable: novel can still signify what is new due to its "novelty". When it comes to fiction, though, the meaning of the term has changed over time:
- The period 1200-1750 saw a rise of the novel (originally a short piece of fiction) rivalling the romance (the epic-length performance): this development, which one could describe as the first rise of the novel, occurred across Europe, though only the Spanish and the English went one step further and allowed the word novel (or, in Spanish, novela) to become their regular term for fictional narratives.
- The period 1700-1800 saw the rise of a "new romance" in reaction against the potentially scandalous production of novels. The movement encountered a complex situation in the English market, where the term "new romance" could hardly be ventured, after the novel had done so much to transform taste. The new genre adopted the name novel: this new novel was a work of new epic proportions, with the effect that the English (and Spanish) finally needed a new word for the original short "novel": The term novella was finally created to fill the gap in English. "Short story" brought a further refinement. The meaning of the term romance changed within the same complex process, becoming the word for a love story whether in life or fiction. Other meanings include the musicologist's genre "Romance" of a short and amiable piece, or Romance languages for the languages derived from Latin (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and so forth).

History

Traditions of Prose Fiction: The Ancient World

As Pierre Daniel Huet noted in 1670, the tradition of epic works went back as far as Virgil and Homer. The regular format was verse, suiting the purpose of tradition in a culture of oral performances. Today, we see this tradition as going back even further, to the epic of Gilgamesh. It is more difficult to speak of the influence of the shorter performances of regular storytelling on the medieval traditions which led to the development of the novel/novella. There was a third tradition of prose fictions, both in a satirical mode (with Petronius's Satyricon and the incredible stories of Lucian of Samosata), and a heroic strain (with the romances of Heliodorus and Longus). The ancient Greek romance was revived by Byzantine novelists of the 12th century. All of these traditions were then rediscovered in the 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately influencing the modern book market.

The Romance, 1100-1500

The word romance seems to have become the label of romantic fictions because of the "Romance" language in which early (11th and 12th century) works of this genre were composed. The most fashionable genres developed in southern France in the late 12th century and spread east- and northwards with translations and individual national performances. Subject matter such as Arthurian knighthood had already at that time traveled in the opposite direction, reaching southern France from Britain and French Britanny. As a consequence, it is particularly difficult to determine how much the early "romance" owed to ancient Greek models and how much to such northern folkloric verse epics as Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied. The standard plot of the early romance was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies, a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with a second set of adventures leading to a final reunion. Variations kept the genre alive. Unexpected and peculiar adventures surprised the audience with romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Classics of the romance developed such as the Roman de la Rose, written first in French, and famous today in English thanks to the translation by Geoffrey Chaucer. These original romances were verse works, adopting a "high language" thought suitable to heroic deeds, and to inspire the emulation of virtues; prose was considered "low", more suitable for satire). Verse allowed the culture of oral traditions to live on, yet it became the language of authors who carefully composed their texts—texts to be spread in writing, thus to preserve the careful artistic composition. The subjects were aristocratic. The textual tradition of ornamented and illustrated handwritten books afforded patronage by the aristocracy or by the monied urban class developing in the 13th and 14th centuries, for whom knight errantry most clearly was a world of fiction and fantasy. The 14th and 15th centuries saw the emergence of first prose romances, a genre rose along with a new book market. This market had developed even before the first printing facilities were introduced: prose authors could speak a new language, a language avoiding the repetition inherent in rhymes. Prose could risk a new rhythm and longer thoughts. Yet it needed the written book to preserve the coincidental formulations the author had chosen. Whilst the printing press was still to come, a commercial book production trade had developed. Legends, lives of saints and mystical visions in prose were the main object of the new market of prose productions. The urban elite, female readers in upper class households and monasteries read religious prose. Prose romances appeared as a new and expensive fashion on this market. They could only truly flourish with the invention of the printing press and with paper becoming a cheaper medium. Both of these achievements arrived in the late 15th century, when the old romance was already facing fierce competition from a number of shorter genres; most salient among these genres was the novel, a form that arose in the course of the 14th century.

The Emergence of the Novel, 1200-1500

Legend It is difficult to give a full catalog of the genres that finally culminated—with the works of Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Niccolò Machiavelli and Miguel de Cervantes—in the "novel" as known today . The early novel was basically any story told for its spectacular or revealing incidents. The original environment—living on with the typical frame settings—was the entertaining conversation. Stories of grave incidents could just as well augment sermons. Collections of examples facilitated the work of preachers in need of such illustrations. A fable could illustrate a moral conclusion; a short historical reflection could do the same. A competition of genres developed. Tastes and social status were—if one believes the medieval collections—decisive. The working classes loved their own brand of drastic stories: stories of clever cheating, wit and ridicule levelled against hated social groups (or competitors among the story tellers). Much of the original genre is still alive with the short joke told in everyday life to make a certain humorous point in a conversation. Artistic performances included the story within a story: situations in which a series of stories was allegedly told. They rejoiced in a broad pattern of tastes and genres. The Canterbury Tales constitute a classic example, with their noble storytellers fond of "romantic" stories and their lower narrators preferring stories of everyday life. The genre did not have its own generic term. "Novel" would simply denote the novelty of the accident narrated. The inclusion of frame stories, however, brought an awareness of the fact that genres were developing in this field. The main advantage of the background story was the justification it put into the hands of the actual authors such as Chaucer and Boccaccio. Romances afforded lofty language and relied on an accepted notion of what deserved to be read as high style. Yet what if the taste in moral teachings and poetry changed? Romances quickly outdated. Stories of cheats and pranks, illicit love affairs, and clever intrigues in which certain respectable professions or the citizens of another town were made fun of were, on the other hand, neither morally nor poetically justifiable. They carried their justification outside. The story teller would offer a few words why he thought this story was worth being told. Again, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales afford the best examples: the real author could tell stories without any other justification than that this story gave a good portrait of the person who told it and of his or her taste—and that justification would remain stable throughout history. If lofty performances grew tedious—as they did in the 14th and 15th centuries with the old plots never leading to newer ones—the collections of tales or novels made it easy to criticise the lofty performances and to reduce their status: one of the group of narrators (created by the actual author) could start with the romantic story only to be interrupted by the other narrators listening within the story. They might silence him or order him to speak a language they liked, or they might ask him to speed up and to make his point. The result was a rise of the short genre. The steps of this development can be noted with the short story gaining appreciation and the value to rival romances in new versified collections at the end of the 14th century.

The First Rise of the Novel, 1500-1750

The Canterbury Tales The invention of printing subjected both novels and romances to a first wave of trivialisation and commercialisation. Printed books were expensive, yet something people would buy, just as people still buy expensive things they can barely afford. Alphabetisation, or the rise of literacy, was a slow process when it came to writing skills, but was faster as far as reading skills were concerned. The Protestant Reformation afforded readers of religious pamphlets, newspapers and broadsheets. The urban population learned to read, but did not aspire to participation in the world of letters. The market of chapbooks developing with the printing press comprised both romances and little histories, tales and fables. Woodcuts were the regular ornament and they were offered without much care. A romance in which the heroic knight had to fight more than ten duels within a few pages could get the same illustration of such a fight again and again if the printers stock of standard illustrations was small. As their stocks grew, printers repeated the same illustrations in other books with similar plots, mixing these illustrations without respect to style. You can open 18th century chapbooks and find illustrations from the early years of printing next to more modern ones. Romances were reduced to cheap and abrupt plots resembling modern comic books. Neither were the first collections of novels necessarily prestigious projects. They appeared with an enormous variety from folk tales over jests to stories told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, now venerable authors. comic book comic book comic book A more prestigious market of romances developed in the 16th century, with multi-volume works aiming at an audience which would subscribe to this production. The criticism levelled against romances by Chaucer's pilgrims grew in response both to the trivialisations and to the extended multi-volume "romances". Romances like the Amadis de Gaula led their readers into dream worlds of knighthood and fed them with ideals of a past no one could revitalise, or so the critics complained. Italian authors like Machiavelli were among those who brought the novel into a new format: while it remained a story of intrigue, ending in a surprising point, the observations were now much finer: how did the protagonists manage their intrigue? How did they keep their secrets, what did they do when others threatened to discover them? The whole question of novels and romances became critical when Cervantes added his Novelas Exemplares (1613) to the two volumes of his Don Quixote (1605/15). The famous satirical romance was levelled against the Amadis which had made Don Quixote lose his mind. Advocates of the lofty romance would, however, claim that the satirical counterpart of the old heroic romance could hardly teach anything: Don Quixote neither offered a hero to be emulated nor did it satisfy with beautiful speeches; all it could do was to make fun of lofty ideals. The Novelas Exemplares offered an alternative between the heroic and the satiric mode, yet critics were even less sure about what to make of this production. Cervantes told stories of adultery, jealousy and crime. If these stories were to give examples, they gave examples of immoral actions. The advocates of the "novel" responded that their stories taught both with good and with bad examples. The reader could still feel compassion and sympathy with the victims of crimes and intrigues, if evil examples were to be told. The alternative to dubious novels and satirical romances were better, lofty romances: a production of romances modeled after Heliodorus arrived as a possible answer with excursions into the bucolic world. Honoré d'Urfés L'Astrée (1607-27) became the most famous work of this type. The criticism that these romances had nothing to do with real life was answered through the device of the roman à clef (literally "novel with a key", one that, properly understood, alludes to characters in the real world). John Barclay's Argenis (1625-26) appeared as a political roman à clef. The romances of Madeleine de Scudéry gained greater influence with plots situated in the ancient world and content taken from life. The famous author told stories of her friends in the literary circles of Paris and developed their fates from volume to volume of her serialised production. Readers of taste bought her books, as they offered the finest observation of human motives, characters taken from life, excellent morals regarding how one should and should not behave if one wanted to succeed in public life and in the intimate circles she portrayed. The novel went its own way: Paul Scarron (himself a hero in the romances of Madeleine de Scudéry) published the first volume of his Roman Comique in 1651 (successive volumes appeared in 1657 and, by another hand, in 1663) with a plea for the development Cervantes had induced in Spain. France should (as he wrote in the famous 21st chapter of his Roman Comique [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/library/e-1700-0002.html#c21]) imitate the Spanish with little stories like those they called "novels". Scarron himself added numerous of such stories to his own work. Twenty years later Madame de La Fayette made the next decisive steps with her two novels. The first, her Zayde published in 1670 together with Pierre Daniel Huet's famous Treatise on the Origin of Romances, was a "Spanish History". Her second and more important novel appeared in 1678: La Princesse de Clèves proved that France could actually produce novels of a particularly French taste. The Spanish enjoyed stories of proud Spaniards who fought duels to avenge their reputations. The French had a more refined taste with minute observation of human motives and behaviour. The story was firmly a "novel" and not a "romance": a story of unparalleled female virtue, with a heroine who had had the chance to risk an illicit amour and not only withstood the temptation but made herself more unhappy by confessing her feelings to her husband. The gloom her story created was entirely new and sensational. The regular novel took another turn. The late 17th century saw the emergence of a European market for scandal, with French books appearing now mostly in the Netherlands (where censorship was liberal) to be re-imported clandestinely back into France. The same production reached the neighbouring markets of Germany and Britain, where it was welcomed both for its French style and its predominantly anti-French politics. The novel flourished on this market as the best genre to purport scandalous news. The authors claimed the stories they had to tell were true, told not for the sake of scandal but only for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, they fictionalized the names of their characters and told these stories as if they were novels. (The audience played its own game in identifying who was who). Journals of little stories appeared—the Mercure Gallant became the most important. Collections of letters added to the market; these included more of these little stories and led to the development of the epistolary novel in the late 17th century. In the late 1670s the novel reached the English market. Aphra Behn and William Congreve were among the first modern English authors to adopt the term.

State of Affairs: The Market around 1700

Early 18th century novels and romances were still not considered part the world of learning, hence, not of part of literature; they were market goods. If you opened the term catalogues it was mostly situated in the—predominantly political—field of "History and Politicks" with some romances like Cervantes Don Quixote translated into verse becoming poetical. The integration of prose fiction into the market of histories appeared under the following scheme:

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		3.1 Heroical Romances: Fénelon's Telemach (1699)
1 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of public affairs: Manley's New Atalantis (1709)	2 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of private affairs: Menantes' Satyrischer Roman (1706)	3.2 Classics of the novel from the Arabian Nights to M. de La Fayette's Princesse de Cleves (1678)	4 Sold as true private history, risking to be read as romantic invention: Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719)	5 Sold as true public history, risking to be read as romantic invention: La Guerre d'Espagne (1707)
		3.3 Satirical Romances: Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605)	From Olaf Simons, Marteaus Europa (Amsterdam, 2001), p.194.

The centre of the market was held by fictions which claimed to be fictions and which were read as such. They comprised a high production of romances and, at the bottom end, an opposing production of satirical romances. In the centre, the novel had grown, with stories that were neither heroic nor predominantly satirical, yet mostly realistic, short and stimulating with their examples of human actions to be discussed. The central production had two wings: On the left hand, one had books which claimed to be romances, but which threatened to be anything but fictitious. Delarivier Manley wrote the most famous of them, her New Atalantis, full of stories the author claimed to have invented. The censors were helpless: Manley had hawked stories discrediting the ruling Whigs, yet should they ask the Whigs to prove that all these stories actually happened on British soil rather than on the fairy tale island Atalantis? This was what they had to do if they wanted to sue the author. Delarivier Manley escaped the interrogations unscathed and continued her libellous work with three more volumes of the same ilk. Private stories appeared on the same market, creating a different genre of personal love and public battles over lost reputations. On the other hand one had a market of titles which claimed to be strictly non-fictional—Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe became the most important of them. The genre-identification: "Sold as true private history, risking to be read as romantic invention" opened the preface:

IF ever the Story of any Man's Adventures in the World were worth making Publick, and were acceptable when Publish'd, the Editor of this Account thinks this will be so.
     The Wonders of this Man's Life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be found extant; the Life of one Man being scarce capable of a greater Variety.
     The Story is told with Modesty, with Seriousness, and with a religious Application of Events to the Uses to which wise Men always apply them (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this Example, and to justify and honor the Wisdom of Providence in all the Variety of Circumstances, let them happen how they will.
     The Editor believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither is there any Appearance of Fiction in it: And however thinks, because all such things are dispatch'd, that the Improvement of it, as well as the Diversion, as to the Instruction of the Reader, will be the same; and as such he thinks, without farther Compliment to the World, he does them a great Service in the Publication.

A production of histories of similar verisimilitude dove into the overtly political. Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (1644-1712) became the most important author in this field with his first version of d'Artagnan's story, told again more than a century later by Alexandre Dumas the elder. Witty, and a distant precursor of Ian Fleming's fictional James Bond, is another book allegedly by his hand: La Guerre d'Espagne (1707) the story of a disillusioned French spy, who gave insight into French politics—and into his own love affairs, with little intrigues he managed wherever he had to do his jobs. Fact and fiction were mixed in all these titles, to the point that one could no longer tell where the author had invented and where he had simply betrayed secrets.

The Second Rise of the Novel or the New Romance, 1700-1800

The early 18th century had—with the novel diving into private and public scandal—reached a state of affairs where a new reform seemed desirable. The old Amadis could be said to have driven its readers into dream worlds, and the new novels, devoid of lofty speeches and incredible acts of heroism, had done much to refine taste. Yet they had created entirely new risks, with stories of love in which children cheated their parents, and with which private and public gossip were published on the open market. Jane Barker was among the 18th century voices who demanded a return to the old antiquated romance. Her "New Romance" Exilius (1715) opened with the sketch of a new tradition: the romance had, so Jane Barker claimed, developed from Geoffrey Chaucer to François Fénelon; the latter was the author who had just become famous with his epochal romance Telemachus (1699/1700). Fénelon's English publishers had carefully avoided the term "romance" and rather published a "new epic in prose"—so the prefaces. Jane Barker insisted, however, on publishing her Exilius as "New Romance [...] after the manner of Telemachus", and failed on the market. In 1719 her publisher, Edmund Curll, finally removed the old title pages and offered her works as a collection of novels. The big market success of the next decade—Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe—appeared that very year and W. Taylor, the publisher, avoided all these traps with a title page claiming neither the realm of novels nor that of romances, but that of histories, yet with a page design tasting all too much of the "new romance" with which Fénelon had just become famous. histories Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was everything but a novel, as the term was understood at the time. It was neither short, nor did it focus on an intrigue, nor was it told for the sake of a clear cut point. Nor was Crusoe an anti-hero of a satirical romance, though he spoke the first person singular and had stumbled into all kinds of miseries. He did not really invite laughter (though readers of taste would read, of course, all his proclamations about being a real man as made in good humour). The feigned author was serious: Against his will his life had brought him into this series of most romantic adventures. He had fallen into the hands of pirates and survived years on an uninhabited island. He had survived all this—a mere sailor from York—with exemplary heroism. If readers read his work as a romance, full of sheer invention, he could not blame them. He and his publisher knew that all he had to tell was strictly unbelievable, and yet they would claim it was true (and if not, still readable as good allegory)—the complex game which puts this work into the fourth column of the pattern above.

The Market of Classics and the Reform of the Novel, 1700-1800

allegory The publication of Robinson Crusoe did not lead into the mid-18th century market reform. Crusoe's books were published as a dubious histories; they played the game of the scandalous early 18th century market, with the novel fully integrated into the realm of histories. They even appeared reprinted by one of the London newspapers as a possibly true relation of facts. Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau turned Robinson Crusoe into a classic decades later, and it took another century before one could see Defoe's book as the first English "novel"—published, as Ian Watt saw it in 1957, as an answer to the market of French romances. The reform of the early 18th century market of novels came with the production of classics: 1720 saw the decisive edition of classics of the European novel published in London with titles from Machiavelli to Marie de LaFayette. Aphra Behn's novels had over the last decades appeared in collections of her works. The author of the 1680s had become a classic by now. Fénelon had become a classic years ago, as had Heliodorus. The works of Petronius and Longos appeared, equipped with prefaces which put them into the tradition of prose fiction Huet had defined. Prose fiction itself had, according to the critics, a history of ups and downs: having run into a crisis with the Amadis, it found its remedy with the novel. It now needed continuous care. Yet, all in all, it could claim to be the most elegant part of the belles lettres, the new market segment within the bigger market of literature, embracing the new classics. Huet's Traitté de l'origine des romans first published in 1670 and now circulating in a number of translations and editions won a central position among those writings which had dealt with prose fiction. The Treatise had created the first corpus of texts to be discussed and it had been the first title that demonstrated how one could "interpret" worldly fictions—just as a theologian would interpret parts of the gospel in a theological debate. The interpretation needed its aims, of course—and Huet had offered a number of questions one could ask: What did the fictional work of a foreign culture or distant period tell us about those who constructed the fiction? What were the cultural needs such stories answered? Are there fundamental anthropological premises which make us create fictional worlds? Did these fictions entertain, divert and instruct? Did they—as one could assume when reading ancient and medieval myths—just provide a substitute for better, more scientific knowledge or did they add to the luxuries of life a particular culture enjoyed? The ancient Mediterranean erotic stories could afford such an interpretation. The interpretation and analysis of classics placed readers of fictions in an entirely new and improved position: it made a vast difference whether you read a romance and got lost in a dream world or whether you read the same romance with a preface telling you more about the Greeks, Romans or Arabs who produced titles like the Aethopica or The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (first published in Europe from 1704 to 1717 in French and translated immediately from this edition into English and German).

To be Discussed: The Novel turning into Literature, 1740-1800

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights The early 18th century market for classics of prose fiction inspired living authors. Aphra Behn turned from an anonymous hack into a celebrated author after her death. Fénelon achieved the same fame during his life time. Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker and Eliza Haywood followed their famous French models who had dared to claim fame with their real names: the Madame d'Aulnoy and Anne Marguerite Petit DuNoyer. Most previous novels had been pseudonymous; now they became the productions of famous authors. The discourse necessary to appreciate such a move towards responsibility was yet underdeveloped. Journals discussing literature focussed on "learning", literature in the strict sense of the word. So far, most discussion of novels and romances had taken place within the field itself. Literary criticism, a critical—external—discourse about poetry and fiction arose in the second half of the 18th century. It opened an interaction between separate participants in which novelists would write in order to be criticised and in which the public would observe the interaction between critics and authors. The new criticism of the late 18th century offered a reform by establishing a market of works worthy to be discussed (whilst the rest of the market would thus continue but lose most of its public appeal). The result was a market division into a low field of popular fictions and a critical literary production. The latter privileged works which rivalled ancient verse epics to be discussed as art, which played with the traditions of prose fiction (they opened an internal discourse about the history of literature), and which were of a clearly defined fictional status—they alone could be discussed as works created by an artist who wanted this and no other story to be discussed by the audience. The old design of title pages changed: New novels no longer pretended to sell fictions whilst threatening to betray real secrets. Nor did they appear as false "true histories". The new title pages pronounced their works to be fictions, and indicated how the public might discuss them. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740) was one of the titles which brought the old novel-title with its "[...] or [...]" formula offering an example into the new format: "Pamela or Virtue Rewarded – Now first published in order to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes, A Narrative which has the Foundation in Truth and Nature; and at the same time that it agreeably entertains…" So the title page read, and made it clear that the work was crafted by an artist aiming at a certain effect—yet to be discussed by the critical audience. A decade later novels, needed no other status than that of being novels, fiction. Present-day editions of novels simply state "Fiction" on the cover. It had become prestigious to be sold under the label, asking for discussion and thought. Scandal as the DuNoyer or Delarivier Manley had published it vanished from the market of prose fiction—whether high or low. It could not attract serious critics and it was lost if it remained undiscussed. It ultimately needed its own brand of scandalous journalism—the journalism which developed with the yellow press. The low market of prose fiction went on to focus on immediate satisfaction of an audience enjoying its stay in the fictional world. The high market grew complex, with works playing new games. On the high market, one could eventually see two traditions developing: one of works playing with the art of fiction—Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is among them—the other closer to the prevailing discussions and moods of its audience. The great conflict of the 19th century was yet to come, as to whether artists should write to satisfy the public or whether to produce art for art's sake.

Sentimentalism, Psychology, and a New Individual, 1750-1850

The mid- and late 18th century novel of sentimentalism produced an entirely new individual, one with a different attitude towards privacy and the public. Had the early 18th century heroine been bold and ready to protect her reputation if necessary in a press war her mid-18th century descendant was far too modest and shy to do the same. Early 18th century heroines had their secrets, they loved effective intrigues, they tried whatever they felt necessary to get what they wanted. Mid-18th century heroines developed a feeling of modesty. They suffered if they had to keep secrets and felt an urge to confess. They searched for friends and intimacy, for situations in which they could freely open their hearts and speak of their deepest wishes. The 18th century audience saw these new heroes and heroines with amazement. When it came to their most secret wishes they dared to confide in their parents and friends—a trust which would have made them easy victims in the early 18th century world of fiction, libel, intrigue and scandal. Now, however, these weak heroines met an environment of compassion. Instead of making their affairs a public entertainment, the new heroes and heroines developed an intimacy into which the novel alone could take a careful look. Special genres flourished with these protagonists who would not wash their dirty linen in the public: Their letters or diaries were found and published only after their death. A wave of sentimentalism was the first result, leading to heroes like Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771). A second wave followed with more radical heroes who could no longer dream of an environment understanding them. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) was at the forefront of the new movement, and yielded a wave of compassion and understanding with readers ready to follow Werther into his suicide. Critics embraced the new heroes as the best sign of a new literature which aimed at discussions. The understanding these heroes craved for afforded a secondary discussion—a discussion of the nature of the human psyche so much better observed by these new novels. The novel had, with these developments, turned advocacy of individual and societal moral reform into a genre. With the romantic movement beginning in the 1770s, the development went one step further: the novel became the medium of an avant garde, the genre where emotions found their test cases. The Bildungsroman developed in Germany—a novel focussing on the development of the individual, his or her education and its way into individuality and society. New sciences—from sociology to psychology—developed with the new individual and influenced the discussions surrounding the novel in the 19th century.

The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions

At the beginning of the 17th century the novel had been a genre of realism fighting the romance with its wild fantasies. The novel had turned to scandal, then it had been reformed over the last decades of the 18th century. Fiction eventually became the most honourable field of literature. A wave of novels of fantasy culminated this development at the turn of the 18th into the 19th century. Sensibility was heightened in these novels. Women, overwrought and prone to imagining worlds beyond their appointed one, became the heroines of the new world of "romances" and "Gothic novels" creating stories in distant times and places. Renaissance Italy was a favourite of the gothic novel. The classic Gothic novel is Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). As in other Gothic novels, the notion of the sublime is central. Eighteenth-century aesthetic theory held that the sublime and the beautiful were juxtaposed. The sublime was awful (awe-inspiring) and terrifying while the beautiful was calm and reassuring. The characters and landscapes of the Gothic rest almost entirely within the sublime, with the heroine the great exception. The "beautiful" heroine's susceptibility to supernatural elements, integral to these novels, both celebrates and problematizes what came to be seen as hyper-sensibility. At the beginning of the 19th century, the overwrought emotions of sensibility, as expressed through the Gothic sublime, had run their course. Jane Austen wrote a Gothic novel parody titled Northanger Abbey (1803), reflecting the death of the Gothic novel. Moreover, while sensibility did not disappear, it was less valued. Austen introduced a different style of writing—the comedy of manners. Her novels often are not only funny, but also scathingly critical of the restrictive, rural culture of the early 19th century. Her best known novel, Pride and Prejudice (1811), is her happiest, and has been a blueprint for much subsequent romantic fiction; her novels are still retain a wide following, despite the distance between their heroines' dilemmas and those of a 21st-century reader. The market for novels in the 19th century separated into a new "high" and "low" production. The new high production can best be viewed in terms of national traditions. The low production is rather organised by genres in a pattern deriving from the spectrum of 17th- and 18th-century genres: 1. Literature (with a capital L) promoted by critical discourse.

Spanish Literature

French Literature

German Literature

English Literature

…by language and nation

2. Popular Fiction not promoted by criticism

1
The modern roman à clef (a recent example is Primary Colors)

2
Sex, including soft "romantic" pornography for the female audience

3
Historical settings (the tradition of heroic romances), crime (the tradition of the 17th century novel)

4
Adventure, Science fiction

5
Espionage, Conspiracy

The position of authors attained its modern form with the establishment of this pattern. The modern author can aim at broad market or write with an eye to serious critical discussion. The borders between the realms have developed differently in different nations. While this modern market divide came relatively late to the English-speaking world, Germany and France had an earlier and much stronger interest in creating national literatures—France in the wake of the French Revolution, Germany during its mid-19th-century unification. Both of these nations experienced a division between high literature—discussed in schools and newspapers, and celebrated in public life—and a low production—not worthy to be mentioned in such circles— while the vast commercial market of the English-speaking world still resisted this artificial divide. Here and there new author identities developed as the novel proved to be a perfect medium for a communication both intimate (novels are read by privately whereas plays are always a public event) and public (novels are published and thus become a matter touching the public if not the nation and its vital interests), a medium of a personal point of view which can get the world into its view. New modes of interaction between authors and the public reflected these developments: authors reading in the public, authors receiving prestigious prizes, authors giving interviews in the media and acting as their nations' conscience. This concept of the novelist as public figure arose in the course of the 19th century.

The 20th Century: From Modernism to Postmodernism

Modernist literature and Postmodern literature

Individual Novels Discussed

From Western antiquity—Greece and Rome—these are the earliest, extant novels:
- Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus (Greek, 4th century BC). A largely fictional account of the education of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. This is considered a precursor to the novel.
- Petronius, Satyricon (Latin, 1st century).
- Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Latin, 2nd century).
- Chariton, The Loves of Chaereas and Callirhoe (Greek, 1st century–2nd century).
- Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon (Greek, 2nd century).
- Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (Greek, 2nd century).
- Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale (Greek, 2nd century–3rd century).
- Heliodorus, Ethiopian Tale (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
- Anon, Acts of Xanthippe, Polyxena, and Rebecca (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
- Anon, Joseph and Aseneth (Greek, 1st century–5th century).
- Anon, The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre (Latin adaptation of lost Greek original, 5th century–6th century).

Asian works

Early important Asian novels include:
- Dandin, The Adventures of the Ten Princes (Sanskrit, 6th century–7th century).
- Banabhatta, Kadambari (Sanskrit, 7th century).
- Anon, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Japanese, 10th century).
- Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (Japanese, 11th century). Arguably the first novel, in the sense of a continued fictional narrative written by one author.
- Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese, 14th century).
- Shi Nai'an and Luo Guanzhong, Water Margin (Chinese, 15th century).
- Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West (Chinese, 16th century).
- Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber (Chinese, 18th Century).

The 13th century

- Ramon Llull, Blanquerna (1283)

The 14th century

- Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1353)
- Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (1386-1400)

The 15th century

- Antoine de la Sale, Petit Jehan de Saintré (1456)
- Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (English, 1485).
- Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc (Catalan, 1490), chivalric romance.

The 16th century

- Jacopo Sannazaro, La Arcadia, (Italian, 1504), pastoral novel.
- Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadis de Gaula (Spanish adaptation of lost 13th century original, 1508).
- Thomas More, Utopia (Latin, circa 1516).
- François Rabelais, Pantagruel, (French, 1532).
- Jorge de Montemayor, La Diana (Spanish, 1559), pastoral novel.
- Anon, Lazarillo de Tormes (Spanish, 1554).
- Mateo Alemán, Guzmán de Alfarache (Spanish, 1599).

The 17th century

- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605).
- Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas Exemplares (1613).
- Francisco de Quevedo, El buscón (Spanish, 1626), masterpiece of the picaresque subgenre.
- Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus (German, 1668/1669), the Thirty Years War put into satirical autobiography.
- Aphra Behn, Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (British, 1684/1685/1687), the first full blown epistolary novel.
- Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, (British, 1688).

The 18th century

- Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess, (British, 1719)
- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, (British, 1719)
- Samuel Richardson, Pamela, (British, 1740)
- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, (British, 1749)
- Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, (British, 1759-1767)
- Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, (Scottish, 1771)
- Ignacy Krasicki, The Adventures of Nicholas Experience (the first Polish novel, 1776).
- Frances Burney, Evelina, (British, 1778)
- Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, (

Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the USA. It is a highly philosophical and allegorical story that deals with themes of Rand's own Objectivist philosophy, though she was not yet known as a philosopher when it was written. However, whether or not she had philosophical intentions, and to what extent or sense the novel is an allegory is controversial. The theme of the novel is 'the importance of man's reasoning mind.' It is also one of the longest books ever published, at roughly over 1000 pages.

Philosophy and writing

The theme of Atlas Shrugged is that independent, rational thought is the motor that powers the world. In the book, "men of the mind" go on strike, allowing the collapse of what only they hold together — a peaceful cohesiveness. Rand claims that humans may create wherever forceful human interference is absent. Given no alternative, they remove themselves from the "looters." The book is rooted in Objectivism, the philosophical system founded by Rand. Rand suggests that society stagnates when independence and individual achievement are discouraged or demonized, and that, inversely, a society will become more prosperous as it allows, encourages, and rewards independence and individual achievement. Rand believed that independence flourishes to the extent that people are free, and that achievement is rewarded best when private property is respected strictly. She advocated laissez-faire capitalism as the political system that is most consistent with these beliefs. These considerations make Atlas Shrugged a highly political book, especially in its portrayal of fascism, socialism and communism, or indeed any form of state intervention in societal affairs, as fatally flawed. However, Rand claimed that it is not a fundamentally political book, but that the politics portrayed in the novel are a result of her attempt to display her image of the ideal man and the position of the human mind in society. Rand argues that independence and individual achievement drive the world, and should be embraced. Her worldview requires a "rational" moral code. She disputes the notion that self-sacrifice is a virtue, and is similarly dismissive of human faith in a god or higher being. The book positions itself against Christianity specifically, often directly within the characters' dialogue.

Setting

Exactly when Atlas Shrugged is meant to take place is kept deliberately vague. In section 152, the population of New York City is given as 7 million. The historical New York City reached 7 million people in the 1930s, which might place the novel sometime after that. There are many early 20th century technologies available, but the political situation is clearly different from actual history. One interpretation is that the novel takes place a hundred (or perhaps hundreds) of years in the future, implying that since the world lapsed into its socialistic morass, a global-wide stagnation has occurred in technological growth, population growth, and indeed growth of any kind; the wars, economic depressions, and other events of the 20th century would be a distant memory to all but scholars and academicians. This would be in line with Rand's ideas and commentary on other novels depicting utopian and dystopian societies. The concept of societal stagnation in the wake of collectivist systems is central to the plot of another of Rand's works, Anthem. All countries outside the US have become, or become during the novel, "People's States". There are many examples of early 20th century technology in Atlas Shrugged, but no post-war advances such as nuclear weapons, helicopters, or computers. Jet planes are mentioned briefly as being a relatively new technology. Television is a novelty that has yet to assume any cultural significance, while radio broadcasts are prominent. Though Rand does not use in the book many of the technological innovations available while she was writing, she introduces some advanced, fictional inventions (e.g., sound-based weapon of mass destruction, torture device, power plant). Most of the action in Atlas Shrugged occurs in the United States. However, there are important events around the world, such as in the People's States of Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, and piracy at sea.

Plot

A section by section analysis of Atlas Shrugged is available on Wikibooks. The basic plot follows the character of Dagny Taggart, a no-nonsense railroad executive, who struggles with the frustrations of the fundamental ideological, political and economic changes happening in the world around her. Other major characters include Hank Rearden, a highly successful steel tycoon, and Francisco d'Anconia, a prodigy who is also heir to a fortune based on the copper industry.
- Characters
- Minor Characters
- Companies
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