Living a Second Life

Reincarnation, transmigration and second chance novels are so common among translated novels that I can't imagine not being able to think of the trope (I know I'm biased after reading too many of them). So I was wondering if we had such character settings in English novels before Asian novels or anime influenced us.

Basically, unlike current online novels hosted on sites like ScribbleHub and Royalroad which are heavily influenced by Asian themes, I was wondering if there were originally English novels like this.

 

The Chronicles of Narnia series...

Edit:- Bible!~

 

*interested in knowing too*

 

Probably there are

 

It's a portal fantasy, I did think of that, but it's not exactly a "second life" like dying and living another one. (Rather than reincarnation or transmigration, it's isekai.)

 

Oh my, never tgought of this. I think it was the buddhism influence which made it a-okay to kill a charcater to have him reincarnated.

Divine Comedy, written by Dante is the only one I know, but it isn't reincarnated.

 

I know that it's the religious influence that gave the idea mainly, but it feels like an idea with such potential that I can't believe no one thought of it. I wonder how it'll turn out if a famous English author writes something along that line.

 

not quite reincarnation or transmigration but I think I've read a second chance chick lit novel which featured the FL going back to her past and reliving it... don't recall the title or author but she was a popular writer then

 

Hmm I think I've seen something like this.....

Is it this one?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41147279-again-but-better

 

How about this?
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/13766.Reincarnation_fiction_

 

Hmmm, I was thinking of Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, a 1983 novel but I only watched the film Sylvia-chan. I don't know if you already knew it but feel free to check it out~ ( ´∀｀•)

 

Haven't heard of it, but it sounds interesting. I'll check it out thanks!

Hmm there seem to be quite a few. I wonder how many of those were written before eastern influence.......

 

I think Jason from The Heroes of Olympus is the reincarnation of Jason the Argonaut

 

He isn't reincarnated with memories though, so it was kinda useles

 

Just like half the books on goodreads...... They reincarnate, no memories and they find their "soul mate".

 

That kinda sounds rapey, like, you seem like my ex girlfriend, so I am gonna manipulate you into loving me

 

Not exactly. The soul mate isn't any more aware than the protagonist is, so it's consensual.

 

@.@)b

Stolen from Naherenne


There's a western film with Whoopi Goldberg in where she is a scientist who gets transmigrated back in time to the time of King Arthur. There's even Merlin who can use magic in it.
'-'
There's a western book (I forget its name) where some archaeologists/historians are digging a site in France from the time of the 100 years war. They then get transmigrated back in time to then, with some of them even getting killed. It was also made into a film.

There's a trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay called The Fionavar Tapestry.
In that trilogy, a group of Canadian students are transmigrated into another world where they each have fated roles they didn't even know they had until the story progresses.

I imagine there are many more transmigrated stories.
Not sure on the reincarnation ones since I'm not well-read enough.
orz

X

 

ah no, not this one. the one I read was written in the 2000s~ early 2010s

 

I think that most of the traditional Western transmigration stories wouldn't use reincarnation, but that never meant all that much because older Japanese transmigration stories didn't either! Old school isekai stories from the '80s and '90s like Fushigi Yuugi, Twelve Kingdoms, and Rayearth don't have the protagonist dying. I can't pin a date on it, but reincarnation doesn't show up until the new school isekai that popped up in the 2010s.

Modern Chinese transmigration novels date to "a Step Into the Past" in 1994, but one had the protagonist use a time machine. Transmigration through dying doesn't become a thing until the Qingchuan genre in the mid-2000s. Note that these books don't have anything to do with either variety of Japanese isekai novels - they're more based on Western time travel stories.

And in all of these cases, the details about reincarnation are unimportant; in fact, their main purpose is to avoid the questions mechanics of how the character transmigrated in the first place. And they're often not even proper reincarnation as the protagonist starts off as a teenager or full-blown adult. So in the end, the whole mechanic doesn't count for much so whether Western writers borrowed the idea isn't really all that important. Second chance novels make more difference mechanically, but they're not unheard of in Western fiction.