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novel (dict)
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NovelA novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. The English word "novel" derives from the Italian word novella, meaning "a tale, a piece of news". The novel is longer (40,000 words and onwards) and more complex than either the short story and the novella, is not bound by the structural and metrical restrictions of plays and poetry. In many cases a novel is about characters and their actions in everyday life (often the writer's present), with emphasis on the "novelty" of the narrative. Qualities of the novel Most novels have the following qualities: - Its intent is entertainment, at least partially.
- The subject is presented fictionally, though parts of it may be factual.
- The subject is familiar, credible, and plausible, i.e. readers believe the places and characters.
- The subject is people (usually humans), the story their actions and relations; the novel is centered on the person.
- There is a small number of central characters.
- A single plot, however fragmented or tangential, unites the events and characters.
- The protagonist(s) evolves and grows in the course of the novel; characters are "rounded"fleshed out, than are the "flat," one-dimensional characters of earlier literary genres.
- Its story occurs in an identifiable historical period.
There are exceptions to each of these traits, and a text need not meet all criteria to be a novel. For example, Animal Farm (1945), by George Orwell (19031950), tells its story using farm animals representing human types and human concerns. Another example is the science fiction, or fantasy, novel, believable only when internally consistent, i.e. the rules of the fictional universe are consistent within the novel, itself, indifferent to objective reality, i.e. the Star Trek series, and the fantasy novels of Dennis McKiernans Mithgar series. The novel genre sometimes is contrasted with the Romance genrethe original concept is similar, hence, the French and German word for "novel" is "roman". The first "Romantic fiction" usually was fantasticset in a mythical, ancient time, and had shallow, two-dimensional characters; Don Quixote (1605, 1615), by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), may be read as parody of popular chivalric romance. Contemporaneously, the word "romance" refers to popular fiction with a sentimental, love story at centre stage, often at the expense of characterisation and plot. History of, and generic influences on, the novel Classical period Most scholars agree that the novel emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe; a few argue that the novel dates from antiquity. These scholars argue that personality"evolution of the protagonist's character is the center of the novel; rather the work requires only a set of characters to be considered a novel. Moreover, they heavily emphasise the role of eros in defining the novelin this theory, most often novels are about sentiment and erotic passion. From Western antiquityGreece and Romethese 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, 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 From Asia, the important early 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).
- Anon, The Tale of Ochikubo (Japanese, 10th century).
- Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (Japanese, 11th century).
- Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese, 14th century).
Medieval and Renaissance Early medieval novels included: These were successors to the Byzantine novel of the twelfth century, itself an imitation and modification of the ancient Greek form. In the Renaissance, the important European trend was towards fantastic fiction : - Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (English, 1485).
- Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc (Catalan, 1490), chivalric romance.
- Jacopo Sannazaro, La Arcadia, (Italian, 1504), pastoral novel.
- Garci Rodrguez de Montalvo, Amadis of Gaul (Spanish adaptation of lost 13th century original, 1508).
- Thomas More, Utopia (Latin, circa 1516).
- Franois Rabelais, Pantagruel, (French, 1532).
- Jorge de Montemayor, La Diana (Spanish, 1559), pastoral novel.
The picaresque novel and Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) generally are considered the originators of the modern, European novel, characterized by realism. For example: - Anon, Lazarillo de Tormes (Spanish, 1554).
- Mateo Alemn, Guzmn de Alfarache (Spanish, 1599).
- Francisco de Quevedo, El buscn (Spanish, 1626), masterpiece of the picaresque subgenre.
- Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus (German, 1669), the most important of the non-Spanish picaresque novels.
See also: Romance (genre) 18th century The 18th century is considered, by most scholars of the English novel, to have been the century of the novel's invention or rise, a phrase popularised in Ian Watt's pioneer study in literary sociology, The Rise of the Novel (1957). It is generally agreed that, at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, the novel arose from a host of genres in France and England. Novelists drew upon the new "journalistic" tradition (less reliable than contemporary journalism)criminal biographies and autobiographies (sensational stories of high-profile criminal exploits, often ending with the criminal's contrived repentance), spiritual autobiographies, conduct books (contemporaneous etiquette books ranging from proper titles for the nobility to appropriate topics of conversation for women), travel narratives (often fantastic and rarely accurate accounts of distant places written by explorers, and others, retelling tales told them), religious allegories, and historiesto construct their novels. For example, in Robinson Crusoe (1719), Daniel Defoe fuses news (reports of the castaway Alexander Selkirk), the Puritan spiritual autobiography, the religious allegory, and the travelogue into a tale now considered a representative early novel. There is much debate about the role of the French romance in the development of the English novel. On the one hand, Ros Ballaster argues that the French romance and scandal chronique (popular in France and England), laid the groundwork for the early English novels, especially the novels written by women such as Eliza Haywood. Her Love in Excess (1719), has the markings of a scandal novel, rich with intrigue and sex. Oftentimes these novels were thinly veiled political attacks on ruling parties; these works now are labeled "amatory fiction." On the other hand, Lennard Davis, argues that the French romance is not the root of the novel, but that the novel is more closely tied to the English news traditions outlined above; the novel has multiple beginnings. Ballasters argument works well with one set of texts, and Daviss argument with another, therefore, one could conclude that the novel had not yet solidified into the form recognized today, and most important; women writers were drawing upon different literary traditions, in fashioning the new genre, than were men writers. Around 1740, England's taste for scandal decreased, and the desire to reform morals and manners took hold. Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) often is seen as the first novel embodying this new social trend. In it, he claimed he would "instruct" and "entertain"; it became one of the first "bestsellers". It is the story of maid, who, through chastity, wins the heart of her master and becomes his wife. Richardson's contemporary readers were treated to what they identified as a new level of lietrary "realism" in Pamela; Ian Watt argues that this novel inaugurated the psychological novel genre, because it focused on the psyche of one character, though many argue that this distinction should be awarded to William Godwins Caleb Williams (1795). Richardson achieved this feat through epistolarity, i.e. the novel is a series of Pamela's letters to her parents. This style became popular after Pamela, and writers such as Frances Burney adopted it. In 1749, Henry Fielding published Tom Joneshis major, novelistic response to Pamela, decrying what he saw as "vulgar" or "low" language in Pamela, and its leveling theme. The hero of Tom Jones, a seeming orphan, begins as a rake, reforms, and discovers he is an aristocrat, thus gaining his fortune. Fielding saw himself as reinstating the proper social hierarchy that Richardson challenged. He also was trying to lay the foundations for the new genre, denouncing Richardsons popular style, and describing his own novel as a comic epic in prose, hearkening to the Classical tradition. Fielding tried to legitimize his novel with classical allusions, but he still appealed to the popular audience with raucous and bawdy jokes. During that time, the genre of the novel became "fixed", i.e. readers knew what to expect. Typically, the novel was the story of the education, in the broadest sense, of a protagonist. The more experimental, "messy", novels, those whose plots were convoluted or non-existent, from earlier in the century, such as the scandal novels of Eliza Haywood, fell by the wayside. At mid-century, these two novels, and others, spawned the novel of sensibility. In it, the protagonist, most often a young woman, naively encounters the world and learns to refine her natural goodness. Sensibility was a character trait important in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. A person with sensibility was attuned with nature and was easily, and rightly, affected by the feelings of others; the "sensible" person noticed the hurt of others and was a barometer of social morality. An excellent example of this type of novel is Frances Burney's Evelina (1778), wherein the heroine, while naturally good, in part for being country-raised, hones her politeness when visiting Londonshe is educated into propriety. This novel also is the beginning of "romantic comedy". At the end of the eighteenth century, sensibility's value was questioned, as it made its bearers, particularly women, too overwrought and too prone to imagining worlds beyond their appointed ones. These anxieties are in the rise of the Gothic novel, at century's end. The Gothic novel's story occurs in a distant time and place, often Renaissance Italy, and involved the fantastic exploits of an imperiled heroine. The classic Gothic novel is Ann Radcliffes 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 heroines susceptibility to supernatural elements, integral to these novels, both celebrates and problematizes what came to be seen as hyper-sensibility. Finally, at the beginning of the nineteenth 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 the Gothic novel. Moreover, while sensibility did not disappear, it was less valued. Austen introduced a different style of writingthe comedy of manners, but her novels often are not funny, bur are scathing critiques of the restrictive, rural culture of the early nineteenth century. Her best known novel, Pride and Prejudice (1811), is her happiest, and has been blueprint for much subsequent romantic fiction; her other novels feature heroines for whom the modern reader has little sympathy, and may dislike. - Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, (British, 1688)
- 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)
- Frances Burney, Evelina, (British, 1778)
- Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, (British, 1794)
- Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, (British, 1796)
19th century The 19th century was the great century of the novel; its major novelists were French, English, Russian, American and Polish: - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (British, 1811).
- Stendhal, The Red and the Black (French, 1830).
- Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed (Italian, 1840).
- Honor de Balzac, Le pre Goriot (French).
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (American, 1851).
- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (British, 1857).
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (French,1857).
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (British, 1860-1861).
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (French, 1862).
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Russian, 1865).
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (Russian, 1866).
- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (American, 1885).
- Benito Prez Galds, Fortunata y Jacinta (Spanish, 1886-1887).
- Bolesław Prus, Pharaoh (Polish, 1895).
- Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (Polish, 1897).
20th century In the first decade of the 20th Century, modernism emerged: While the origin of the novel was among white Europeans and Americans, in the 20th century many novelists emerged from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds. From 1960 to 1967, the Latin American novel publication boomed; see Latin America novel boom: Among the most notable African American novelists and novels are: Modernism has continued in the late 20th century, sometimes becoming postmodernism; the above-mentioned Toni Morrison is part of that tradition, as well as: Simultaneously, other novelists worked in traditions generally ignoring or reacting against modernist thought. Genre novels From the late Victorian period to the present, several types of "genre" novels and romances have been popular. While often slighted by critics and academics, these have been as popular as the more critically and academically acclaimed novels; in recent times, the best of these have been recognized as serious literature. Detective and mystery novels References - Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
- Ballaster, Ros. Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction from 16841740. Oxford: Clarendson Press, 1992.
- Davis, Lennard. Factual Fictions: the Origins of the English Novel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
- Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
- Hunter, J.P. Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. New York: Norton and Co., 1990.
- McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel: 16001740. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
- Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
See also
Novel is also the name of a commune of the Haute-Savoie dpartement in France. External Links
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