When Did I Close My Eyes First Appear In Novels?

2025-08-28 07:09:15 297

4 Answers

Ulysses
Ulysses
2025-08-30 04:31:56
I was sipping coffee the last time I chased a similar question, and it turned into an unexpectedly fun forensic hunt. Think about it this way: the behavior — closing one’s eyes — is universal in storytelling, but the exact string 'I closed my eyes' is tied to first-person storytelling in printed language. The earliest long prose works we call novels include 'The Tale of Genji', and later Europe's 'Don Quixote', yet those works often use third-person narration or translators’ choices shape the exact wording.

For English-language novels, you’d likely start seeing the precise phrase more often in the 18th and 19th centuries when interiority and personal perspective became central. Earlier texts might have equivalents in Latin or Old English, and classical writers described the action (think of torch-smothered death scenes or people shutting eyes in prayer). If I were you, I’d search digitized archives with date ranges — watch out for translations and editorial modernizations that can retroactively insert the modern phrasing. It’s a detective project, but one that rewards you with glimpses of changing narrative taste and translation practices. I’m still tempted to run a few searches and report back with clips.
Annabelle
Annabelle
2025-08-31 16:09:01
I get a little giddy over questions like this, because it’s one of those tiny literary mysteries that turns into a rabbit hole fast. If you mean the literal phrase 'I closed my eyes' showing up in novels, the short reality is: there isn’t a neat, single date. Prose narratives describing someone shutting their eyes go back long before the modern novel — think classical epics and medieval romances — but the modern novel as we think of it only really stabilizes with works like 'The Tale of Genji' (11th century Japan) and, in the West, 'Don Quixote' (1605).

Those early long prose works contain scenes where characters close their eyes, fall asleep, or die with eyes shut, but the precise English phrasing 'I closed my eyes' depends on translation and first-person narration. First-person narrative forms became common in later centuries, so literal first-person statements like 'I closed my eyes' are most traceable from 17th–19th century English prose onward. If you want to hunt specific instances, I’d poke around 'Google Books', 'Project Gutenberg', and corpora for 18th–19th century texts — you’ll find an explosion of interior, confessional lines once the novel leans into psychological realism.

Honestly, I love that this question forces you to think about how language, translation, and narrative voice all tangle together. If you want, I can sketch a search strategy that will help you find early printed instances in English.
Henry
Henry
2025-09-03 14:39:05
Short, curious, and practical: there’s no single recorded moment when 'I closed my eyes' first appeared in novels because the description predates the novel as a genre and the exact words depend on language and POV. If you mean in the broadest sense, scenes of characters closing eyes are ancient; if you mean the literal first-person phrase in English, it becomes clearly common from the 1700s–1800s onward as novels developed interiority.

If you want to find an early printed instance, I’d use 'Google Books', 'Project Gutenberg', or Early English archives and filter by date — and be mindful of translations. It’s a small phrase, but chasing it tells you a lot about how narration and translation evolved.
Violet
Violet
2025-09-03 16:02:22
My take is quick and practical: pinning the very first time the phrase showed up in novels is basically impossible without defining language and geographic scope. If you mean in English novels specifically, the phrase pops up a lot once first-person narration becomes popular in the 1700s and explodes in the 1800s with psychological realism. If you mean the act being described — characters closing their eyes — that’s older than the novel form itself and appears across ancient and medieval literature.

I usually tackle this by searching large digitized book collections. Try a phrase search in 'Google Books' with date filters, or use 'Project Gutenberg' and specialty databases like Early English Books Online. Also, corpus tools like the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) can show when a phrase gains frequency. It’s less about a single "first" moment and more about tracing how the phrase becomes common in narrative voice, which is a neat little history lesson if you like digging through texts.
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