WHAT IS NOVEL?

 

The novel is often defined as being a fiction in prose of a certain length, typically more than 50 000 words, with characters, incidents and perhaps a plot. This admits of counterexamples: many novels contain passages written in drama or verse form. Ulysses by James Joyce MobyMoby-Dick by Herman Melville

novel is one form of an extended fictional prose narrative.

It differs from allegory (which functions to teach some sort of moral lesson) and romance (with its emphasis on spectacular and exciting events designed to entertain) in its emphasis on character development.

The novel, however, arises from the desire to depict and interpret human character. The reader of a novel is both entertained and aided in a deeper perception of life's problems.

The word "novel" (which wasn't even used until the end of the 18th century) is an English transliteration of the Italian word "novella means the little thing used to describe a short, compact, broadly realistic tale popular during the medieval period (e.g. The Decameron).

The term for the novel in most European languages is roman, which suggests its closeness to the medieval romance.

The novel deals with a human character in a social situation, man as a social being. The novel places more emphasis on character, especially one well-rounded wellcharacter, than on plot. Another initial major characteristic of the novel is realism--a full and authentic realism--a report of human life.

The traditional novel has:



a unified and plausible plot structure sharply individualized and believable characters a pervasive illusion of reality

How Did the Novel in English Come to Be?

 

There was a public demand for the novel. With the expansion of the middle class by the middle of the 18th century, more people could read and they had money to spend on literature. There was already a high interest in autobiography, biography, journals, diaries, memoirs. Alexander Pope's dictum that "The proper study of mankind is man" led to increased interest in the human character.

The early English novel departs from the allegory and the romance with its vigorous attempt at verisimilitude and it was initially strongly associated with the middle class, their pragmatism, and their morality.

HISTORY OF NOVEL


In order to understand the novel as a genre, it is important to learn how novel emerged as a literary genre. Although the traces of novel date back to the ancient times, the novel took its modern form beginning in the 1500s.

Miguel Cervantes is credited with writing the first Western novel, Don Quixote, the first part of which was published in 1605.

But the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms predates this by centuries and is easily a novel by modern standards.

The Tale of Genji , by Murasaki Shikibu (a Japanese noblewoman), was written even earlier, in the early 11th century, and is often considered to be the world's first novel. Still, many Greek and Latin narratives may also fit that description, including The Golden Ass by Apuleius, a 2nd century Latin author from North Africa. The first English language novelist was Daniel Defoe who wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719.

The novel and other literary genres



Prior to the rise of the novel very little work written in prose was taken seriously as artistic literature. People used prose for science, law, history, and philosophy, but the general attitude was that work written without poetry could hardly count as aesthetically interesting on its own.

The early novel was meant to reach a large public and at the beginning it was considered as a lower form of literature neither true nor beautiful. The novel is thus historically linked with realism in style and content, but this can no longer be considered generally true.

What sets the novel apart from a short story is that it is longer, more complex, and deals with more than one issue in the lives of its characters. What sets it apart from a play is that it is not confined by the restrictions of the stage, human actors and the audience. What sets it apart from poetry is that it is written in prose form.

Major 18th Century Novelists in English

        

DANIEL DEFOE called the founder of the modern English novel, Defoe established: a dominant unifying theme with a serious thesis convincing realism (through an almost-journalistic firstalmostfirstperson narrative) a middle class viewpoint Major Works: Robinson Crusoe (1719) Moll Flanders (1722)

SAMUEL RICHARDSON
 

 

Richardson created the novel of character. Whereas Defoe's characters too often seem to be simply fighting their way out of circumstantial dilemmas, Richardson's characters are complete and complex human beings. Major Works Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (I, 1740; II, 1741): story told through a series of letters Clarissa (1747-48) (1747-

HENRY FIELDING


Defoe claimed his fiction to be fact; Richardson considered his works moral preachments. Fielding is the first to unashamedly and forthrightly write novels. Fielding's two major works, Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749), both contain essays constituting the initial English attempt to define and explain the novel as a literary genre.

JANE AUSTEN


 

  

Though not an 18th century novelist, Austen has more in common with the novelists of the 18th century than she does with the novelists of the early 19th century. Austen is the greatest English novelist of manners. Restricting herself to the society of landed gentry, Austen is a miniaturist; the feminine Augustan. Major Works: Pride and Prejudice (c. 1812) Emma (1816)

The Romantic Novel



Romanticism is a movement in art and literature that began in Europe in the late 18th century and was most influential in the first half of the 19th century. Romanticism fosters a return to nature and also values the imagination over reason and emotion over intellect. One strain of the Romantic is the Gothic with its emphasis on tales of horror and the supernatural.

Major Romantic Novelists

 

 

CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816-55) (1816Bronte's major novel Jane Eyre (1847) is the model for countless novels featuring governesses and mysterious strangers. EMILY BRONTE (1818-48) (1818Bronte's major work Wuthering Heights (1847) is full of Gothic elements.

 

   

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851) (1789Cooper's most popular novels of the frontier feature Natty Bumpo, a man at one with nature. Major Works: The Last of the Mohicans (1826) The Deerslayer (1841)

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-64) (1804Hawthorne's novels are marked by his obsession with his Puritan ancestors and with the issue of guilt. His most famous novels feature elements of the Romantic and the Gothic. Major Works: The Scarlet Letter (1850) The House of the Seven Gables (1851)

  

 

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-91) (1819Melville's novels are about the sea and seamen. His masterwork Moby Dick (1851) is a study in obsession and its consequences as well as an exploration of the nature of evil.

The Victorian Novel



The Victorian Age is marked roughly by the reign of Queen Victoria of England from 183718371901. The Victorian reading public firmly established the novel as the dominant literary form of the era. The novel is the most distinctive and lasting literary achievement of Victorian literature.

Earlier in the century Sir Walter Scott had created a large novel-reading public and novelhad made the novel respectable. The publication of novels in monthly installments enabled even the poor to purchase them

The novelists of the Victorian era:

 

 

accepted middle class values treated the problem of the individual's adjustment to his society emphasized well-rounded middle-class wellmiddlecharacters portrayed the hero as a rational man of virtue believed that human nature is fundamentally good and lapses are errors of judgment corrected by maturation

The Victorian novel appealed to readers because of its:

 

 

realism impulse to describe the everyday world the reader could recognize introduction of characters who were blends of virtue and vice attempts to display the natural growth of personality expressions of emotion: love, humor, suspense, melodrama, pathos (deathbed scenes) moral earnestness and wholesomeness, including crusades against social evils and self-censorship to selfacknowledge the standard morality of the times.

The Victorian novel featured several developments in narrative technique:

  

full description and exposition authorial essays multiplotting featuring several central characters Furthermore, the practice of issuing novels in serial installments led novelists to become adept at subclimaxes.

Major Victorian Novelists

 

   

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) (1812Dickens was the most successful of the English Victorian novelists, a master of sentiment and a militant reformer. We admire Dickens for his: fertility of character creation depiction of childhood and youth comic creations

 

Major Works: A Christmas Carol (1843), most popular Christmas story in the English speaking world David Copperfield (1849-50), essentially (1849autobiographical and Dickens' own favorite novel Bleak House (1852-3), the first Dickens novel (1852with a carefully-knit plot carefully-

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811(181163) Thackeray's chief subject is the contrast between human pretensions and human weakness. He excelled at portraying his own upper middle class social stratum. His major work is Vanity Fair (1847).

GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANN EVANS) (1819(1819-88) Eliot is considered to be the first modern novelist, a creator of psychological fiction. She is known for her penetrating character analyses and convincingly realistic scenes. In Eliot's novels plot did not need to depend upon external complications; it could rise from a character's internal groping toward knowledge and choice.

Major Works:
 

Adam Bede (1859), a love triangle set in prepreindustrial agricultural England Silas Marner (1861), the nearest thing to a perfect George Eliot novel with a plot about a miser who adopts a foundling and the theme of the regenerative power of humanity and love Middlemarch (1871-72), the first English novel (1871concerned with the intellectual life, the story of a city during the agitated era of 1832 reforms, the Industrial Revolution, the Evangelical movement, and the new scientific outlook

 

THOMAS HARDY (1840-1920) (1840The characteristic Victorian novelist such as Dickens or Thackeray was concerned with the behavior and problems of people in a given social milieu which he described in detail. Thomas Hardy preferred to go directly for the elemental in human behavior with a minimum of contemporary social detail. He felt that man was an alien in an impersonal universe and at the mercy of sheer chance.

   

Though readers assume he is a pessimist he called himself a meliorist, yearning hopefully for a better world. Major Works: Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) Jude the Obscure (1895) The revolt in Jude the Obscure against indissoluble Victorian marriage (of Jude to Arabella and Sue Bridehead to Phillotson) aroused such a storm of protest over its religious pessimism and sex themes that Hardy turned thereafter exclusively to poetry.

Other Victorian Novelists of Note

 

  

WILKIE COLLINS(1824-89) COLLINS(1824Collins is considered the father of the modern detective novel. Major Works: The Woman in White (1860) The Moonstone (1868), the novel which G.K Chesterton termed "probably the best detective story in the world"

 

LEWIS CARROLL (CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON) (1832-98) (1832A mathematician, Carroll sublimated his antiantiVictorianism in his writing. Major Works: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which remains one of the best-loved children's books bestin the English speaking world Through the Looking-Glass (1871) Looking-

Major 19th Century American Novelists



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-96), (1811whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was one of the many influences on the start of the American Civil War

 

    

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916) (1843James was not only a novelist but an influential critic of the novel whose prefaces to his own work were later collected in The Art of the Novel (1934). His exploration of point of view and his development of stream of consciousness technique have greatly influenced subsequent writers of fiction. Major Works: The Portrait of a Lady (1881) The Wings of the Dove (1902) The Ambassadors (1903) The Golden Bowl (1904)

MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL LANGHORE CLEMENS) (1835(1835-1910) Twain's best work breaks out of the local color genre. Major Works: Tom Sawyer (1876) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), generally considered to be the Great American Novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

   

 

 

KATE CHOPIN (1851-1904) was a local color (1851writer whose works are set in the Creole society of Louisiana. The Awakening (1899) is an early feminist novel about a woman unhappy in her marriage. JACK LONDON (1876-1916) (1876London's adventures in the Pacific Northwest and during the Alaska gold rush were the basis of his very popular short stories and novels such as The Call of the Wild (1903) and The Sea Wolf (1904).

   

EDITH WHARTON Major Works: Ethan Frome (1911) The Age of Innocence (1920) STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900) (1871The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Crane's novel of the Civil War, is generally considered one of the greatest war novels of all time. Crane had never seen combat when he wrote this novel.

 

   

THEODORE DREISER (1871-1945) (1871Major Works: Sister Carrie (1900) An American Tragedy (1925)

Literary historians describe two general phases of 20th century literature, divided by World War II: Modern literature--roughly 1900 or literature--roughly 1914--1945 1914--1945 Contemporary literature--1945 to the literature--1945 present

The great overshadowing events of the 20th century include:

  

  

World War I The Great Depression World War II, including the Holocaust and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima The Cold War The launch of Sputnik and advent of space flight The end of colonialism and the rise of Third World countries The reshaping of the face of world Communism

A number of key thinkers have influenced the novels of the 20th century. They include:


Charles Darwin,whose Origin of Species Darwin,whose (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) described man as simply the occupant of the highest rung on the evolutionary ladder and who promoted the idea of survival of the fittest Karl Marx, who in the Communist Manifesto Marx, (1848) and Das Capital (1867) saw history as the struggle between capitalist owners and the non propertied proletariat with the revolution ultimately won by the workers

Friedrich Nietzsche, whose work valued Nietzsche, instinct over intellect and insisted on the complete freedom of the individual in a world that lacks transcendent law ("God is Dead") Sir James Frazier, whose recounting of myths Frazier, in The Golden Bough (1890) showed the continuity and similarity between primitive and civilized culture

Sigmund Freud, who in Interpretation of Freud, Dreams (1899) put forth a new model of personality governed in large part by irrational and unconscious survivals of infantile fantasy Carl G. Jung, who described the concepts of Jung, the collective unconscious, a buried level of universal experience tapped by myth, religion, and art, and the concept of archetypes, the master patterns revealing the common experiences of the human species

Max Planck whose quantum theory (1900) described the unpredictability of atomic and subatomic particles Albert Einstein whose theory of relativity (1905) abandoned concepts of absolute motion and absolute difference of time and space and proposed that reality consisted of a fourfourdimensional space-time continuum space-

Werner Heisenburg whose Uncertainty Principle (1927) proclaimed that scientific measurement (specifically the measurement of electrons) was a matter of approximation emphasizing the approximate nature of reality

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) who saw the (1889human condition as absurd because man exists in the world without any understanding of his fate JeanJean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), developer of (1905existentialism, the belief that man is totally responsible for his own actions and that he ought to reject external laws

In the 20th century man confronted emptiness and doubts about:

   

the existence of God the primacy of the human race in creation the supremacy of reason in human affairs the perception that life is self-evidently selfworth living the nature of reality

The 20th century, like the Victorian era, is a period characterized by the dizzying rapidity of change. With the advent of air and space travel and the development of telecommunications, and with such sociological developments as the rise of multinational corporations and the growing equality of the sexes, the planet has truly become a Global Village.

The change that characterized the Victorian era was most prominently the concept of progress caused by the new industrialization. By the modern era the erosion of the fundamental principles of science and religion begun in the 19th century had taken full effect. The fundamental modern change was massive disillusionment.

Most modern writers looked within themselves for a principle of order. The literature of the 20th century has an overwhelming preoccupation with the self, the nature of consciousness, and the processes of perception. Literature is often subjective, and personal and internal.

Authors are concerned with the fragmentation of both experience and thought. Many employ stream-of-consciousness: stream-ofthe fluid, associational, often illogical, sequence of the ideas, feelings and impressions of a single mind as seen in the works of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

Key Modern Novelists in World Literature



FRANZ KAKFA (1883-1924, born in (1883Prague, Czechoslovakia Noted for his surrealistic fiction such as the novella "The Metamorphosis" (1915, tr. 1948) and The Trial (1925, tr. 1937)

  

ERICH MARIE REMARQUE (1898-1970) (1898German journalist and novelist Wrote All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), the best known and best example of World War I anti-war literature anti-

 

  

THOMAS MANN (1875-1955) (1875German novelist and essayist, known for his narrative psychological studies of the artistic temperament and for his exploration of mythology. Mann won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927; he became an American citizen in 1944 after fleeing the Nazis. Major Works: "Death in Venice" (1912), a novella Venice" The Magic Mountain (1924) a Bildungsroman set in a sanatorium

 

MARCEL PROUST (1871-1922) (1871French novelist whose works attempt to find the true meaning of past experience in involuntary memories stimulated by some object or circumstance His masterwork is Recherche du Temps Perdu (literally, in search of lost time); English title Remembrance of Things Past) (16 Past) volumes, 1913-27); includes Swann's Way 1913-

 

ANDRE MALREAUX (1901-76) (1901French novelist and critic who wrote novels of political and social involvement filled with pessimism about the destiny of Western man. Man's Fate (1933), based on the Shanghai insurrection of 1927 in which Communists take over the city and are then rebuffed by former ally Chaing-Kai Shek Chaing-

 

    

JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941) (1882Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet and practitioner of experimental narrative techniques. Major Works: The Dubliners (1914), a short story collection A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916),largely autobiographical Ulysses (1921) Finnegan's Wake (1939)

 

   

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1935) (1882English novelist and essayist, whose fiction featured stream-of-consciousness technique stream-ofMajor Works: Mrs. Dalloway (1925) To the Lighthouse (1927) A Room of One's Own (1929) a book-length bookessay about a woman's need to find a space to do her own creative work

 

 

D.H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930) whose novels (1885often glorified nature and featured frank sexuality. Major Works: Sons and Lovers (1913), largely autobiographical Women in Love (1921) Lady Chatterly's Lover (1928) famously banned for its sex scenes.

 

   

WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962) (1897American novelist and short story writer whose stories set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County of his home state of Mississippi chronicled the decline of the South after the Civil War. Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 Major Works: Works: The Sound and the Fury (1929) Light in August (1932)

Contemporary Literature (c. 1945--present) 1945--present)



Literature of the contemporary period is also often referred to as post-modern or postneoneo-modern literature. Even more than the Moderns, contemporary authors reflect pluralism. They are preoccupied with perception, fragmentation, the loss of belief in anything outside the self, pervasive irony.

The era immediately following the end of World War II (1945-1963) was dominated (1945by an awareness of the Holocaust and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Other key events of the era include the McCarthy hearings and Brown v. Board of Education, Education, the Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation (1954) as well as the rise of the influence of television.

   

The recent past (1963--present) is marked (1963--present) by social unrest and political upheaval. Domestic upheaval included race riots assassinations, assassination attempts protests against the Vietnam War

the Stonewall Rebellion (1969) and the rise of the gay rights movement the feminist movement marked by the publication of Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1970) and by the appearance of Ms. Ms. magazine (1972) as well as the widespread use of the birth control pill

  

the Watergate Scandal culminating in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 the omnipresence of drugs and both soft and hard core pornography the decline of the family and rising divorce rates the AIDS epidemic 9/11/01 and the war on terrorism

Key Contemporary Movements and Novelists in World Literature

 

     

There is a strong resurgence of realistic writing, often in support of social change: Nadine Gordimer and playwright Athol Fugard in South Africa James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison on racism Alice Walker and Toni Morrison on racism and sexism Alexander Solzhenitzen on Stalinism Elie Wiesel on the Holocaust Salman Rushdie on Islam Yukio Mishima on Japanese imperialism

 

 

Other American realists of note include: John Updike (b. 1932). author of Rabbit, Run (1960) and several sequels John Cheever (1912-82 whose The Wapshot (1912Chronicles (1957) portrayed life in the suburbs Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938) Bobbie Ann Mason (b. 1940), a K-Mart realist Kwhose works such as In Country (1985) relate the drab experiences of the lower middle class

American regionalists include:



Larry McMurtry ( Texas)

 

Lonesome Dove Terms of Endearment The Accidental Tourist Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) A Mother and Two Daughters The Lords of Discipline

Anne Tyler ( Baltimore)

 

Gail Godwin ( North Carolina)



Pat Conroy (South Carolina)



The Prince of Tides

Jewish literature in the United States portrayed the dilemmas of misfit heroes yearning for meaningful lives and moral regeneration Philip Roth (b 1933)


Goodbye, Columbus (1959), short stories that won the Pulitzer Prize Portnoy's Complaint The Assistant The Natural

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) (1914 

The Fixer

Writers in English whose work illuminates the Third World:

  

Amy Tan (Chinese)



The Joy Luck Club (1989)

Sandra Cisneros (Hispanic) winner of a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation Louise Erdrich (b. 1954) (Native American)
 

Love Medicine (1984), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award The Beet Queen

 

Bharati Mukherjee (Indian) Jasmine (1989)

Experimentalists in the United States include:



William Burroughs


Naked Lunch (1959) V. (1963) The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) Gravity's Rainbow (1972) Lost in the Funhouse (1968)

Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)

  

John Barth (b. 1930)



  

Other major modern literary writers in the United States include: Jane Smiley


A Thousand Acres The Bluest Eye (1970) Song of Solomon (1977) Beloved (1987) The Color Purple (1982)

Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Morrison,

  

 

Alice Walker (b. 1944)



In Search of Our Mother's Garden (1982), "womanist" prose

Some Definitions of Terms



In general premodernism assumes that man is ruled by authority (e.g., the Catholic Church) and tradition. With modernism, influenced by humanism and modernism, the Enlightenment, man rejects tradition and authority in favor of a reliance on reason and on scientific discovery. Postmodernism stretches and breaks away from the idea that man can achieve understanding through a reliance on reason and science.