 1.What is Fiction?

 2. What is novella?

 3. Difference between Novel and Novella

 4. Difference between Novel and other forms of

Literature
 5.Origin and development of Novel

➢ 6. Elements of Fiction: Story, Characters, Plot,

Setting, Narrative Technique, Point of view,Theme.
 7.Techniques and devices.
 What is Literature?

 Definitions:
 ‘litterae’-letter
 ‘Performance of words’- Robert Frost
 Function of Literature:
 a. To delight b. To teach/instruct c. To move
 Three main kinds of Literature:
 1. poetry 2. drama 3. novel

 To reform
‘To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius and to mend the heart.’- Pope
  “A fictitious prose narrative or tale
presenting a picture of real life,
especially of the emotional crises in the
life history of the men and women
portrayed.”- Chambers English
dictionary
 ‘ a Pocket Theatre’- F. Marion
Crawford
 ‘Comic epic in prose.’- Henry Fielding
 ‘A fiction in prose of a certain extent’-
French critic, M. Abel Chevalley
 ‘The novel is a picture of real life and
manners, and of the times in which it is
written. The Romance in lofty and
elevated language, describes what never
happened nor is likely to happen. The
Novel gives a familiar relation of such
things as pass every day before our
eyes…’- Clara Reeve in ‘The Progress of Romance’
quoted in ‘Novelists on the Novel’ by Miriam Allott
https://www.google.com/search?q=novel+image&tbm=i (p.14) pub. by Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. 1959.
sch&ved=2a
 ‘a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length in which characters and
actions representative of real life are portrayed in a plot of more or less
complexity.’ – Shorter Oxford Dictionary

 A novel is ‘a sustained story which is not historically true, but might very
easily be so. Its plain and direct purpose is to amuse by a succession of senses
painted from Nature, and by a thread of emotional narrative.’- Encyclopaedia Britannica.

 ‘A novel is in its broadest definition, a personal, a direct impression of life.’-

Henry James
 The Novel: Its Forms and Techniques by Dr. S. P. Sen Gupta

 “A Novel not only is made up of fictive utterances, but is itself a fictive

utterance, in that it represents the verbal action of a man (i.e. a narrator)
reporting, describing and referring.” A Handbook of Literary Terms- M.H. Abrams & Geoffrey Harpham
 Novel- i. (adj.) new, strange
 ii. (noun) An invented story in prose.
 Novelette i. (noun) a short novel (differs in lit.
quality)
 Novella (Italian) i. (noun) – a short tale in prose, longer
than a short story.
 Novelle- The term originally meant ‘fresh story’
 E.g. Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’
 Prose Fiction-
 Micro fiction, flash fiction, Short story, Novel,
Novella

 Element of fiction is common in all genres of

literature.
 Difference between Novel and Romance

 Origin of Novel- Medieval romance (a fantastic tale of love

and adventure)
 ‘Decameron’ (1350)- Boccaccio (1313-75)
 E.g. ‘Morte d’ Arthur’ – Sir. Thomas Malory
Difference between Novel and Romance:
Romance
Novel Novel

1.Complex characters with mixed 1. Simplified characters discriminated

motives as heroes & villains.
2. Social 2. Solitary & isolated
3. Effect of realism 3. Non-realistic
4. ‘Pride & Prejudice’-Jane Austen 4. ‘Wuthering Heights’- Emily Bronte
Difference between Novel & Other Forms of Literature

❑ Novel and Drama

❑ Novel and Poetry

❑ Novel and Short Story

 ‘Perfection is possible only in the short story,
not in the novel. The short story is like a
room to be furnished; the novel is like a
warehouse.’- I. B. Singer
 Development of Novel during 14th -17th Centuries
 Don Quixote’- Cervantes (1606-15)
 18th Cent. English Novel:
 19th Cent. English Novel:
 20th Cent. English Novel:
 Novel till today…
 Story
 Character
 Plot
 Setting
 Narrative Technique
 Point of View
 Theme
 Succession of events.

 Narrative of events arranged in Time-Sequence

 Causality: Relation between cause and effect

 ‘and then’ = ‘that’s why’ or ‘therefore’

 E.M. Forster’s ‘Aspects of Novel’

 WHAT?

 Curiosity

 Story is the backbone of the novel.

 " It was early in a fine summer's day, near the end of the 18th
cent., when a young man of genteel appearance having
occasion to go towards the north-east of Scotland, provided
himself with a ticket in one of those public carriages which
travel between Edinburgh and the Queensferry at which place,
as the name implies and is well known to all my northern
readers, there is a passage-boat for crossing the Firth of
Forth.” -Walter Scott
 George Lewes
 ‘dramatic ventriloquism’
 Actors
 a. Protagonist b. Antagonist
 Four Types: 1.Round 2.Dynamic 3.Flat 4.Static
 Values, Qualities
 Henry James
 With Whom?

 Intelligence & Imagination

 ‘Character, in any sense in which we can get at it, is action and
action is plot, and any plot which hangs together, even if it
pretends to interest us only in the fashion of Chinese puzzle,
plays upon our emotion, our suspense, by means of personal
references. We care what happens to people only in proportion
as we know what people are.’ -Henry James

 ‘The Theory of the Novel’- John Halperin

 Action
 ‘Character gives us qualities but it is in action- what we do- that we are happy or the
reverse.’- Aristotle
 ‘All human happiness and misery’ says Aristotle ‘take the form of action.’
 Role of happiness and misery
 Emphasis on Causality
 E.g. 1. ‘King died and then queen died.’
2. ‘The king died and then queen died of grief.’
Credit to- Ref. E.M. Forster’s Aspects of Novel
➢ WHY? & How?
➢ Surprise, Mystery, Suspense, Memory and Intelligence, Conflict..
 CONFLICT

• Happens within
1. INTERNAL • Struggle with one’s own desire, beliefs..

• Happens Outside

2. EXTERNAL • Struggle with elements outside..

 TYPES OF CONFLICT

Man Vs Man Vs Fate/

Man/Woman
Man Vs Self
Supernatural

Man Vs
Man Vs Machine/Science
Society/System

Man Vs Nature
TIME WHEN?
•Era
•Year
•Morning, Afternoon, Evening…

PLACE WHERE?
•Region
•Locale
•Single Room

ENVIRONMENT In WHICH?
•Culture
•Customs
•Society
 ‘All great writers are regionalists. Faulkner
wrote about Mississippi, Homer about Greece,
Balzac about Paris, Shakespeare about a kind
of England. But that doesn’t mean that they
are not universal. People write about what
they know best and readers respond to that
wherever they happen to live.’
 -Ernest Gaines (Afro-American writer)
 Setting can be fictitious- e.g. ‘Wessex’ in
Thomas Hardy’s novels

 William Faulkner's ’Yoknapatawpha County’

is a fictional Mississippi country.
 Four Styles of Writing:-

 A. Expository: informs

 B. Descriptive: describes

 C. Persuasive: convinces

 D. Narrative: tells story

 1. Back story
 2. Flashback
 3. Flash-forward
 4. Foreshadowing
 To whom the narrator is speaking?
 a. Direct Narration b. Frame Narration c. Indirect Narration
 1. First Person- Pros- Narrator is a witness, Can make
judgement
Cons- Unable to read character’s mind completely, depends
only on his observations

 2. Second Person

 3. Third Person Limited

 4. Third Person Omniscient

credit to-
‘ https://www.slideshare.net/elkissn/point-of-view-41236427’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFHuPmHtuD0
 Assertions-i. world ii. Human life iii.
Situations iii. Opinion
 Subject is different.

 Destiny-Subject
 ‘Man is a puppet in the hands of destiny’-
Hardy - Theme
 Ref. M.H. Abram’s A Glossary of Literary
Terms
Thank you…