Don Quixote is often hailed as the first novel--a designation that confuses me given works like Gargantua and Pantagruel. Was Don Quixote considered different contemporaneously? If not, when did perspectives towards it shift, and how was it distinguished from earlier prose narratives?

by mowshowitz

Edit: When I say "how was it distinguished," I mean to say, "at the time Don Quixote first became considered the first Western novel, which features of that text were used to distinguish it from earlier prose narratives?" The character limit kind of forced me to be a little imprecise.