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A novel is a relatively long work of narrative
''The True Story of the Novel''
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historical romances of Walter Scott and the
A novel is a long, fictional narrative. The novel in the
fiction
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...
, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys (; 8 October 187217 June 1963) was an English philosopher, lecturer, novelist, critic and poet born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar of the parish church in 1871–1879. Powys appeared with a volume of verse ...
, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels.
According to Margaret Doody
Margaret Anne Doody (born September 21, 1939) is a Canadian author of historical detective fiction and feminist literary critic. She is professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame, helped found the PhD in Literature Program at Notre D ...
, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature ...
, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...
.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel''
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historical romances of Walter Scott and the
Gothic novel
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of ea ...
. Some, including M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott, have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents.
Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels, including '' The Lord of the Rings'', '' To Kill a Mockingbird'', and '' Frankenstein''. "Romances" are works of fiction whose main emphasis is on marvellous or unusual incidents, and should not be confused with the romance novel, a type of genre fiction that focuses on romantic love.
Murasaki Shikibu's '' Tale of Genji'', an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel based on its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form, but there is considerable debate over this — there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it. Spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and Qing dynasty (1616-1911). An early example from Europe was written in Muslim Spain by the Sufi
Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ...
writer Ibn Tufayl entitled '' Hayy ibn Yaqdhan''. Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of '' Don Quixote'' (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
.''Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature''. Kathleen Kuiper, ed. 1995. Merriam-Webster, Springfield, Mass. Literary historian Ian Watt
Ian Watt (9 March 1917 – 13 December 1999) was a literary critic, literary historian and professor of English at Stanford University. His ''The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding'' (1957) is an important work in the h ...
, in ''The Rise of the Novel'' (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.
Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebook
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
s. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in some graphic novels. While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular more recently.
Defining the genre
A novel is a long, fictional narrative. The novel in the modern era
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
usually makes use of a literary prose style. The development of the prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovations in printing, and the introduction of cheap paper in the 15th century.
Several characteristics of a novel might include:
*Fictional narrative: Fiction
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...
ality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from historiography. However this can be a problematic criterion. Throughout the early modern period authors of historical narratives would often include inventions rooted in traditional beliefs in order to embellish a passage of text or add credibility to an opinion. Historians would also invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the other hand, depict the social, political and personal realities of a place and period with clarity and detail not found in works of history. Several novels, for example Ông cố vấn
Ong is a Hokkien romanization of several Chinese surnames: ('' Wáng'' in Hanyu Pinyin), (also ''Wāng''), (traditional) or ( simplified; '' Huáng''); and (Weng). Ong or Onge is also a surname of English origin, with earliest known records f ...
written by Hữu Mai
Hữu Mai (7 May 1926 – 2007)Hữu Mai's obituary
was a
was a
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
of southern France, especially those by Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes (Modern ; fro, Crestien de Troies ; 1160–1191) was a French poet and trouvère known for his writing on Arthurian subjects, and for first writing of Lancelot, Percival and the Holy Grail. Chrétien's works, including ''E ...
(late 12th century), and in Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
's (c. 1343 – 1400) ''The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, ...
''). Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byron's '' Don Juan'' (1824), Alexander Pushkin's '' Yevgeniy Onegin'' (1833), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime.
Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabet ...
's '' Aurora Leigh'' (1856), competed with prose novels. Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crosswor ...
's '' The Golden Gate'' (1986), composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel.
* Experience of intimacy: Both in 11th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations. Harold Bloom characterizes Lady Murasaki
was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She is best known as the author of '' The Tale of Genji,'' widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between about ...
's use of intimacy and irony in '' The Tale of Genji'' as "having anticipated Cervantes as the first novelist." On the other hand, verse epics, including the '' Odyssey'' and '' Aeneid'', had been recited to select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters. A new world of individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, "conduct", and "gallantry" spread with novels and the associated prose-romance.
* Length: The novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...
. However, in the 17th century, critics saw the romance as of epic length and the novel as its short rival. A precise definition of the differences in length between these types of fiction, is, however, not possible. The philosopher and literary critic György Lukács argued that the requirement of length is connected with the notion that a novel should encompass the totality of life.
East Asian definition
East Asian countries, like China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan, use the word 小說 ( pinyin: ''xiǎoshuō''), which literally means "small talks", to refer works of fiction of whatever length. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures, the concept of novel as it is known in the Western/Anglophone world was and still is termed as "long length small talk" (長篇小說), novella as “medium length small talk” (中篇小說), and short stories as "short length small talk" (短篇小說). However, in Vietnamese culture, the term 小說 exclusively refers to 長篇小說 (long-length small talk), i.e. standard novel, while different terms are used to refer to novella and short stories. Such terms originated from ancient Chinese classification of literature works into "small talks" (tales of daily life and trivial matters) and "great talks" ("sacred" classic works of great thinkers like Confucius). In other words, ancient definition of "small talks" merely refer to trivial affairs, trivial facts, and can be different from the Western concept of novel. According to Lu Xun, the word "small talks" first appeared in the works of Zhuang Zhou, which coined such word. Laters scholars also provided similar definition, such as Han dynasty historianBan Gu
Ban Gu (AD32–92) was a Chinese historian, politician, and poet best known for his part in compiling the ''Book of Han'', the second of China's 24 dynastic histories. He also wrote a number of '' fu'', a major literary form, part prose ...
categorized all the trivial stories and gossips collected by local government magistrates as "small talks". Hồ Nguyên Trừng Hồ Nguyên Trừng (chữ Hán: 胡元澄, pinyin Hu Yuancheng; also known as Lê Trừng, ; 1374? – 1446?) was a Trần dynasty, Vietnamese scholar, official, and engineer in exile in Ming dynasty, China. He was the oldest son of Emperor Hồ Q ...
classified his memoir collection Nam Ông mộng lục
Dream memoir of Southern Man ( vi-hantu, 南翁夢錄, link=no, Vietnamese language, Vietnamese : ''Nam Ông mộng lục'') is a memoir written by Vietnamese official Hồ Nguyên Trừng during his exile in Ming dynasty in the early 15th century. ...
as "small talks" clearly with the meaning of "trivial facts" rather than the Western definition of novel. Such classification and also left strong legacy in several East Asian interpretations of Western definition of novel at the time when Western literature was first introduced to East Asian countries. For example, Thanh Lãng and Nhất Linh
Nguyễn Tường Tam (chữ Hán: 阮祥三 or 阮祥叄; Cẩm Giàng District, Cẩm Giàng, Hải Dương 25 July 1906 – Saigon, 7 July 1963) better known by his pen-name Nhất Linh (一灵, "One Spirit") was a Vietnamese writer, editor and ...
classified the epic poems such as The Tale of Kiều
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
as "novel", while Trần Chánh Chiếu
Trần (陳) or Tran is a common Vietnamese surname. More than 10% of all Vietnamese people share this surname. It is derived from the common Chinese surname Chen.
History
The Tran ruled the Trần dynasty, a golden era in Vietnam, and succe ...
emphasized the "belongs to the commoners", "trivial daily talks" aspect in one of his work.
Early novels
The earliest novels include classical Greek and Latin prose narratives from the first century BC to the second century AD, such as Chariton's ''Callirhoe Callirrhoe (, grc, Καλλιρρόη; also Callirhoe) may refer to:
* Callirhoe (mythology), several figures in Greek mythology, including:
** Callirrhoe (Oceanid), daughter of Oceanus and Tethys
** Callirrhoe (daughter of Achelous)
* Callirrhoe ...
'' (mid 1st century), which is "arguably the earliest surviving Western novel", as well as Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Satyricon'',
Romance or chivalric romance is a type of narrative in prose or
The modern distinction between history and fiction did not exist in the early sixteenth century and the grossest improbabilities pervade many historical accounts found in the early modern print market. William Caxton's 1485 edition of Thomas Malory's ''
Stories of witty cheats were an integral part of the European novella with its tradition of
A market of literature in the modern sense of the word, that is a separate market for fiction and poetry, did not exist until the late seventeenth century. All books were sold under the rubric of "History and politicks" in the early 18th century, including
''Pearl Buck and the Chinese Novel''
p. 442. Asian Studies – Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 1967, 5:3, pp. 437–51.
The rising status of the novel in eighteenth century can be seen in the development of philosophical and
The rise of the word novel at the cost of its rival, the romance, remained a Spanish and English phenomenon, and though readers all over Western Europe had welcomed the novel(la) or short history as an alternative in the second half of the 17th century, only the English and the Spanish had, however, openly discredited the romance.
But the change of taste was brief and Fénelon's ''Telemachus'' 'Les Aventures de Télémaque''">Les_Aventures_de_Télémaque.html" ;"title="'Les Aventures de Télémaque">'Les Aventures de Télémaque''(1699/1700) already exploited a nostalgia for the old romances with their heroism and professed virtue. Jane Barker explicitly advertised her ''Exilius'' as "A new Romance", "written after the Manner of Telemachus", in 1715. Robinson Crusoe spoke of his own story as a "romance", though in the preface to the third volume, published in 1720, Defoe attacks all who said "that ..the Story is feign'd, that the Names are borrow'd, and that it is all a Romance; that there never were any such Man or Place".
The late 18th century brought an answer with the
By the 1680s fashionable political European novels had inspired a second wave of private scandalous publications and generated new productions of local importance. Women authors reported on politics and on their private love affairs in The Hague and in London. German students imitated them to boast of their private amours in fiction. The London, the anonymous international market of the Netherlands, publishers in Hamburg and Leipzig generated new public spheres. Once private individuals, such as students in university towns and daughters of London's upper class began to write novels based on questionable reputations, the public began to call for a reformation of manners.
An important development in Britain, at the beginning of the century, was that new journals like '' The Spectator'' and '' The Tatler'' reviewed novels. In Germany
The very word romanticism is connected to the idea of romance, and the romance genre experienced a revival, at the end of the 18th century, with gothic fiction, that began in 1764 with 
The new romances challenged the idea that the novel involved a realistic depiction of life, and destabilized the difference the critics had been trying to establish, between serious classical art and popular fiction. Gothic romances exploited the grotesque, and some critics thought that their subject matter deserved less credit than the worst medieval tales of Arthurian knighthood.
The authors of this new type of fiction were accused of exploiting all available topics to thrill, arouse, or horrify their audience. These new
Many 19th-century authors dealt with significant social matters. Émile Zola's novels depicted the world of the working classes, which Marx and Engels's non-fiction explores. In the United States slavery and racism became topics of far broader public debate thanks to
James Joyce's ''
The 20th century novel deals with a wide range of subject matter. Erich Maria Remarque's ''
Genre literature might be seen as the successor of the early modern 
Crime became a major subject of 20th and 21st century genre novelists and crime fiction reflects the realities of modern industrialized societies. Crime is both a personal and public subject: criminals each have their personal motivations; detectives, see their moral codes challenged. Patricia Highsmith's thrillers became a medium of new psychological explorations.
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
'. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981. ritten during the 1930s* * * Updated edition of pioneering typology and history of over 50 genres; index of types and technique, and detailed chronology. * McKeon, Michael, ''Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Histories of the novel * * * * * * Heiserman, Arthur Ray. ''The Novel Before the Novel'' (Chicago, 1977) * * Mentz, Steve (2006). ''Romance for sale in early modern England: the rise of prose fiction''. Aldershot: Ashgate. * Moore, Steven (2013). ''The Novel: An Alternative History''. Vol. 1, Beginnings to 1600: Continuum, 2010. Vol. 2, 1600–1800: Bloomsbury. * * from Leah Price * Relihan, Constance C. (ed.), ''Framing Elizabethan fictions: contemporary approaches to early modern narrative prose'' (Kent, Ohio/ London: Kent State University Press, 1996). * Roilos, Panagiotis, ''Amphoteroglossia: A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medieval Greek Novel'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005). * Rubens, Robert, "A hundred years of fiction: 1896 to 1996. (The English Novel in the Twentieth Century, part 12)." Contemporary Review, December 1996. * Schmidt, Michael, ''The Novel: A Biography'' (Cambridge, MA:
''The novel 1780-1832''
at the British Library
''The novel 1832-1880''
at the British Library
''The House of the Seven Gables'' with "Preface"
* {{Authority control Fiction Fiction forms Prose Media formats Literary terminology
Satyricon'',
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata, '; la, Lucianus Samosatensis ( 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer
Pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets, unbound (and therefore ...
's '' True Story'', Apuleius' '' The Golden Ass'', and the anonymous '' Aesop Romance'' and '' Alexander Romance.'' The style of these works was later adapted in later Byzantine novel
Byzantine romance represents a revival of the ancient Greek romance of Roman times. Works in this category were written by Byzantine Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire during the 12th century.
History
Under the Comnenian dynasty, Byzantine writ ...
s such as ''Hysimine and Hysimines'' by Eustathios MakrembolitesJohn Robert Morgan, Richard Stoneman, ''Greek fiction: the Greek novel in context'' (Routledge, 1994), Gareth L. Schmeling, and Tim Whitmarsh (hrsg.) ''The Cambridge companion to the Greek and Roman novel'' (Cambridge University Press 2008). Narrative forms were also developed in Classical Sanskrit in the 5th through 8th centuries, such as ''Vasavadatta
:''Vasavadatta is also a character in the Svapnavasavadatta and the Vina-Vasavadatta''
''Vasavadatta'' ( sa, वासवदत्ता, ) is a classical Sanskrit romantic tale (''akhyayika'') written in an ornate style by Subandhu, whose ti ...
'' by Subandhu, '' Daśakumāracarita and Avantisundarīkathā'' by Daṇḍin, '' Kadambari'' by Banabhatta.
Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song Dynasty (960–1279) China led to the evolution of oral storytelling into fictional novels
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself ...
by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Parallel European developments did not occur until after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type, movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its ki ...
in 1439, and the rise of the publishing industry over a century later allowed for similar opportunities. The modern European novel is often said to have begun with '' Don Quixote'' in 1605.
Medieval period 1100–1500
Chivalric romances
Romance or chivalric romance is a type of narrative in prose or verse
Verse may refer to:
Poetry
* Verse, an occasional synonym for poetry
* Verse, a metrical structure, a stanza
* Blank verse, a type of poetry having regular meter but no rhyme
* Free verse, a type of poetry written without the use of strict me ...
popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval
The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the period of European history that lasted from AD 1000 to 1300. The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and were followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended around AD 1500 ...
and Early Modern Europe
Early modern Europe, also referred to as the post-medieval period, is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century. Histori ...
. They were marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight-errant with heroic qualities, who undertakes a quest
A quest is a journey toward a specific mission or a goal. The word serves as a plot device in mythology and fiction: a difficult journey towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical. Tales of quests figure prominently in the folklore of ever ...
, yet it is "the emphasis on heterosexual love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the '' chanson de geste'' and other kinds of epic
Epic commonly refers to:
* Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation
* Epic film, a genre of film with heroic elements
Epic or EPIC may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and medi ...
, which involve heroism." In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love
Courtly love ( oc, fin'amor ; french: amour courtois ) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing vari ...
.
Originally, romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to:
*Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066
*Anglo-Norman language
**Anglo-Norman literature
*Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 1066 ...
and Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language
Occitan (; o ...
, later, in English, Italian and German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
. During the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose.
The shift from verse to prose dates from the early 13th century. The '' Prose Lancelot'' or ''Vulgate Cycle'' includes passages from that period. This collection indirectly led to Thomas Malory's ''Le Morte d'Arthur
' (originally written as '; inaccurate Middle French for "The Death of Arthur") is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Rou ...
'' of the early 1470s. Prose became increasingly attractive because it enabled writers to associate popular stories with serious histories traditionally composed in prose, and could also be more easily translated.
Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
or burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.
intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tale
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...
s, and history, but by about 1600 they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.
d them in '' Don Quixote'' (1605). Still, the modern image of the medieval is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word "medieval" evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and such tropes.
The novella
The term "novel" originates from the production of short stories, ornovella
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...
that remained part of a European oral culture of storytelling into the late 19th century. Fairy tales, jokes, and humorous stories designed to make a point in a conversation, and the exemplum a priest would insert in a sermon belong into this tradition. Written collections of such stories circulated in a wide range of products from practical compilations of examples designed for the use of clerics to compilations of various stories such as Boccaccio's ''Decameron
''The Decameron'' (; it, label=Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dan ...
'' (1354) and Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
's '' Canterbury Tales'' (1386–1400). The ''Decameron'' was a compilation of one hundred novelle
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...
told by ten people—seven women and three men—fleeing the Black Death
The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...
by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills, in 1348.
Renaissance period: 1500–1700
The modern distinction between history and fiction did not exist in the early sixteenth century and the grossest improbabilities pervade many historical accounts found in the early modern print market. William Caxton's 1485 edition of Thomas Malory's ''Le Morte d'Arthur
' (originally written as '; inaccurate Middle French for "The Death of Arthur") is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Rou ...
'' (1471) was sold as a true history, though the story unfolded in a series of magical incidents and historical improbabilities. Sir John Mandeville
Sir John Mandeville is the supposed author of ''The Travels of Sir John Mandeville'', a travel memoir which first circulated between 1357 and 1371. The earliest-surviving text is in French.
By aid of translations into many other languages, the ...
's ''Voyages'', written in the 14th century, but circulated in printed editions throughout the 18th century, was filled with natural wonders, which were accepted as fact, like the one-footed Ethiopians who use their extremity as an umbrella against the desert sun. Both works eventually came to be viewed as works of fiction.
In the 16th and 17th centuries two factors led to the separation of history and fiction. The invention of printing immediately created a new market of comparatively cheap entertainment and knowledge in the form of chapbooks. The more elegant production of this genre by 17th- and 18th-century authors were '' belles lettres—''that is, a market that would be neither low nor academic. The second major development was the first best-seller of modern fiction, the Spanish '' Amadis de Gaula'', by García Montalvo. However, it was not accepted as an example of ''belles lettres''. The ''Amadis'' eventually became the archetypical romance, in contrast with the modern novel which began to be developed in the 17th century.
Chapbooks
A chapbook is an early type ofpopular literature
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
A num ...
printed in early modern Europe
Early modern Europe, also referred to as the post-medieval period, is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century. Histori ...
. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered booklets, usually printed on a single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages. They were often illustrated with crude woodcuts, which sometimes bore no relation to the text. When illustrations were included in chapbooks, they were considered popular prints. The tradition arose in the 16th century, as soon as printed books became affordable, and rose to its height during the 17th and 18th centuries. Many different kinds of ephemera
Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...
and popular or folk literature were published as chapbooks, such as almanacs, children's literature, folk tales
Oral literature, orature or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung as opposed to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used vary ...
, nursery rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From t ...
s, pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...
s, poetry, and political and religious tracts.
The term "chapbook" for this type of literature was coined in the 19th century. The corresponding French and German terms are '' bibliothèque bleue'' (blue book) and '' Volksbuch'', respectively. The principal historical subject matter of chapbooks was abridgements of ancient historians, popular medieval histories of knights, stories of comical heroes, religious legends, and collections of jests and fables. The new printed books reached the households of urban citizens and country merchants who visited the cities as traders. Cheap printed histories were, in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially popular among apprentices and younger urban readers of both sexes.
The early modern market, from the 1530s and 1540s, divided into low chapbooks and high market expensive, fashionable, elegant belles lettres. The '' Amadis'' and Rabelais' '' Gargantua and Pantagruel'' were important publications with respect to this divide. Both books specifically addressed the new customers of popular histories, rather than readers of ''belles lettres''. The Amadis was a multi–volume fictional history of style, that aroused a debate about style and elegance as it became the first best-seller of popular fiction. On the other hand, ''Gargantua and Pantagruel'', while it adopted the form of modern popular history, in fact satirized that genre's stylistic achievements. The division, between low and high literature, became especially visible with books that appeared on both the popular and ''belles lettres'' markets in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries: low chapbooks included abridgments of books such as ''Don Quixote''.
The term "chapbook" is also in use for present-day publications, commonly short, inexpensive booklets.
Heroic romances
Heroic Romance is a genre of imaginative literature, which flourished in the 17th century, principally in France. The beginnings of modern fiction in France took a pseudo- bucolic form, and the celebrated ''L'Astrée
''L'Astrée'' is a pastoral novel by Honoré d'Urfé, published between 1607 and 1627.
Possibly the single most influential work of 17th-century French literature, ''L'Astrée'' has been called the "novel of novels", partly for its immense leng ...
'', (1610) of Honore d'Urfe (1568–1625), which is the earliest French novel, is properly styled a pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
. Although its action was, in the main, languid and sentimental, there was a side of the Astree which encouraged that extravagant love of glory, that spirit of " panache", which was now rising to its height in France. That spirit it was which animated Marin le Roy de Gomberville
Marin le Roy, sieur du Parc et de Gomberville (1600 – 14 June 1674) was a French poet and novelist.
He was born at Paris, and at fourteen he produced a volume of poetry. At twenty he wrote a ''Discours sur l'histoire'' and at twenty-two a pa ...
(1603–1674), who was the inventor of what have since been known as the Heroical Romances. In these there was experienced a violent recrudescence of the old medieval elements of romance, the impossible valour devoted to a pursuit of the impossible beauty, but the whole clothed in the language and feeling and atmosphere of the age in which the books were written. In order to give point to the chivalrous actions of the heroes, it was always hinted that they were well-known public characters of the day in a romantic disguise.
Satirical romances
Stories of witty cheats were an integral part of the European novella with its tradition of fabliaux
A ''fabliau'' (; plural ''fabliaux'') is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes ...
. Significant examples include '' Till Eulenspiegel'' (1510), '' Lazarillo de Tormes'' (1554), Grimmelshausen
Grimmelshausen is a municipality in the district of Hildburghausen, in Thuringia, Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe afte ...
's '' Simplicissimus Teutsch'' (1666–1668) and in England Richard Head's ''The English Rogue'' (1665). The tradition that developed with these titles focused on a hero and his life. The adventures led to satirical encounters with the real world with the hero either becoming the pitiable victim or the rogue who exploited the vices of those he met.
A second tradition of satirical romances can be traced back to Heinrich Wittenwiler Heinrich Wittenwiler (c. 1370–1420) was a late medieval Alemannic poet. He is the author of a satirical poem entitled ''The Ring'' (ca. 1410). He may be identical to an advocate to the bishop of Konstanz, mentioned in 1395. He may be of the fa ...
's ''Ring'' (c. 1410) and to François Rabelais
François Rabelais ( , , ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He is primarily known as a writer of satire, of the grotesque, and of bawdy jokes and ...
' '' Gargantua and Pantagruel'' (1532–1564), which parodied and satirized heroic romances, and did this mostly by dragging them into the low realm of the burlesque. ''Don Quixote'' modified the satire of romances: its hero lost contact with reality by reading too many romances in the Amadisian tradition.
Other important works of the tradition are Paul Scarron
Paul Scarron (c. 1 July 1610 in Paris – 6 October 1660 in Paris) (a.k.a. Monsieur Scarron) was a French poet, dramatist, and novelist, born in Paris. Though his precise birth date is unknown, he was baptized on 4 July 1610. Scarron was the fi ...
's ''Roman Comique'' (1651–57), the anonymous French ''Rozelli'' with its satire on Europe's religions, Alain-René Lesage
Alain-René Lesage (; 6 May 166817 November 1747; older spelling Le Sage) was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel '' The Devil upon Two Sticks'' (1707, ''Le Diable boiteux''), his comedy ''Turcaret'' (170 ...
's '' Gil Blas'' (1715–1735), Henry Fielding's '' Joseph Andrews'' (1742) and ''Tom Jones
Tom Jones may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*Tom Jones (singer) (born 1940), Welsh singer
* Tom Jones (writer) (1928–2023), American librettist and lyricist
*''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'', a novel by Henry Fielding published in ...
'' (1749), and Denis Diderot's ''Jacques the Fatalist
''Jacques the Fatalist and his Master'' (french: Jacques le fataliste et son maître) is a novel by Denis Diderot, written during the period 1765–1780. The first French edition was published posthumously in 1796, but it was known earlier in Germ ...
'' (1773, printed posthumously in 1796).
Histories
A market of literature in the modern sense of the word, that is a separate market for fiction and poetry, did not exist until the late seventeenth century. All books were sold under the rubric of "History and politicks" in the early 18th century, including pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...
s, memoirs, travel literature, political analysis, serious histories, romances, poetry, and novels.
That fictional histories shared the same space with academic histories and modern journalism had been criticized by historians since the end of the Middle Ages: fictions were "lies" and therefore hardly justifiable at all. The climate, however, changed in the 1670s.
The romance format of the quasi–historical works of Madame d'Aulnoy, César Vichard de Saint-Réal
César Vichard de Saint-Réal (1639–1692) was a French polyglot.
He was born in Chambéry, Savoy, but educated in Lyon by the Jesuits. He used to work in the royal library with Antoine Varillas. This French historiographer influenced the way ...
, Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, and Anne-Marguerite Petit du Noyer
Anne-Marguerite du Noyer (Nîmes, 2 June 1663 — Voorburg, May 1719) was one of the most famous early 18th century female journalists. Her reports of the negotiations leading to the Peace of Utrecht were read all over Europe and admired for t ...
, allowed the publication of histories that dared not risk an unambiguous assertion of their truth. The literary market-place of the late 17th and early 18th century employed a simple pattern of options whereby fictions could reach out into the sphere of true histories. This permitted its authors to claim they had published fiction, not truth, if they ever faced allegations of libel.
Prefaces and title pages of seventeenth and early eighteenth century fiction acknowledged this pattern: histories could claim to be romances, but threaten to relate true events, as in the '' Roman à clef''. Other works could, conversely, claim to be factual histories, yet earn the suspicion that they were wholly invented. A further differentiation was made between private and public history: Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...
's '' Robinson Crusoe'' was, within this pattern, neither a "romance" nor a "novel". It smelled of romance, yet the preface stated that it should most certainly be read as a true private history.
Cervantes and the modern novel
The rise of the modern novel as an alternative to the chivalric romance began with the publication of Miguel de Cervantes' '' Novelas Exemplares'' (1613). It continued withScarron
Paul Scarron (c. 1 July 1610 in Paris – 6 October 1660 in Paris) (a.k.a. Monsieur Scarron) was a French poet, dramatist, and novelist, born in Paris. Though his precise birth date is unknown, he was baptized on 4 July 1610. Scarron was the fi ...
's ''Roman Comique'' (the first part of which appeared in 1651), whose heroes noted the rivalry between French romances and the new Spanish genre.
Late 17th-century critics looked back on the history of prose fiction, proud of the generic shift that had taken place, leading towards the modern novel/novella. The first perfect works in French were those of Scarron and Madame de La Fayette's "Spanish history" ''Zayde'' (1670). The development finally led to her '' Princesse de Clèves'' (1678), the first novel with what would become characteristic French subject matter.
Europe witnessed the generic shift in the titles of works in French published in Holland, which supplied the international market and English publishers exploited the novel/romance controversy in the 1670s and 1680s. Contemporary critics listed the advantages of the new genre: brevity, a lack of ambition to produce epic poetry in prose; the style was fresh and plain; the focus was on modern life, and on heroes who were neither good nor bad. The novel's potential to become the medium of urban gossip and scandal fuelled the rise of the novel/novella. Stories were offered as allegedly true recent histories, not for the sake of scandal but strictly for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, fictionalized names were used with the true names in a separate key. The ''Mercure Gallant
The was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group.
The gazette was published f ...
'' set the fashion in the 1670s. Collections of letters and memoirs appeared, and were filled with the intriguing new subject matter and the epistolary novel grew from this and led to the first full blown example of scandalous fiction in Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barrie ...
's ''Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
''Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister'' is a three-volume roman à clef by Aphra Behn playing with events of the Monmouth Rebellion and exploring the genre of the epistolary novel. The first volume, published in 1684, lays some claim ...
'' (1684/ 1685/ 1687). Before the rise of the literary novel, reading novels had only been a form of entertainment.
However, one of the earliest English novels, Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...
's '' Robinson Crusoe'' (1719), has elements of the romance, unlike these novels, because of its exotic setting and story of survival in isolation. ''Crusoe'' lacks almost all of the elements found in these new novels: wit, a fast narration evolving around a group of young fashionable urban heroes, along with their intrigues, a scandalous moral, gallant talk to be imitated, and a brief, concise plot. The new developments did, however, lead to Eliza Haywood's epic length novel, ''Love in Excess'' (1719/20) and to Samuel Richardson's '' Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded'' (1741). Some literary historians date the beginning of the English novel with Richardson's ''Pamela'', rather than ''Crusoe.''Cevasco, George A.''Pearl Buck and the Chinese Novel''
p. 442. Asian Studies – Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 1967, 5:3, pp. 437–51.
18th-century novels
The idea of the "rise of the novel" in the 18th century is especially associated withIan Watt
Ian Watt (9 March 1917 – 13 December 1999) was a literary critic, literary historian and professor of English at Stanford University. His ''The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding'' (1957) is an important work in the h ...
's influential study ''The Rise of the Novel'' (1957). In Watt's conception, a rise in fictional realism during the 18th century came to distinguish the novel from earlier prose narratives.
Philosophical novel
The rising status of the novel in eighteenth century can be seen in the development of philosophical and experimental novel
Experimental literature is a genre that is, according to Warren Motte in his essa"Experimental Writing, Experimental Reading" "difficult to define with any sort of precision." He says the "writing is often invoked in an "offhand manner" and the ...
s.
Philosophical fiction was not exactly new. Plato's dialogues were embedded in fictional narratives and his ''Republic
A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
'' is an early example of a Utopia. Ibn Tufail's 12th century '' Philosophus Autodidacticus'' with its story of a human outcast surviving on an island, and the 13th century response by Ibn al-Nafis, ''Theologus Autodidactus
''Theologus Autodidactus'' ("The Self-taught Theologian"), originally titled ''The Treatise of Kāmil on the Prophet's Biography'' ( ar, الرسالة الكاملية في السيرة النبوية), also known as ''Risālat Fādil ibn Nātiq'' ...
'' are both didactic narrative works that can be though of as early examples of a philosophical Samar Attar, ''The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl's Influence on Modern Western Thought'', Lexington Books, . and a theological novel, Muhsin Mahdi (1974), "''The Theologus Autodidactus of Ibn at-Nafis'' by Max Meyerhof, Joseph Schacht", respectively.
The tradition of works of fiction that were also philosophical texts continued with Thomas More's '' Utopia'' (1516) and Tommaso Campanella's '' City of the Sun'' (1602). However, the actual tradition of the philosophical novel came into being in the 1740s with new editions of More's work under the title ''Utopia: or the happy republic; a philosophical romance'' (1743). Voltaire wrote in this genre in '' Micromegas: a comic romance, which is a biting satire on philosophy, ignorance, and the self-conceit of mankind'' (1752, English 1753). His '' Zadig'' (1747) and ''Candide
( , ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled ''Candide: or, All for the Best'' (1759); ''Candide: or, The ...
'' (1759) became central texts of the French Enlightenment
Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to:
Age of Enlightenment
* Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...
and of the modern novel.
An example of the experimental novel
Experimental literature is a genre that is, according to Warren Motte in his essa"Experimental Writing, Experimental Reading" "difficult to define with any sort of precision." He says the "writing is often invoked in an "offhand manner" and the ...
is Laurence Sterne's '' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' (1759–1767), with its rejection of continuous narration. In it the author not only addresses readers in his preface but speaks directly to them in his fictional narrative. In addition to Sterne's narrative experiments, there has visual experiments, such as a marbled page, a black page to express sorrow, and a page of lines to show the plot lines of the book. The novel as a whole focuses on the problems of language, with constant regard to John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
's theories in '' An Essay Concerning Human Understanding''.
The romance genre in the 18th century
The rise of the word novel at the cost of its rival, the romance, remained a Spanish and English phenomenon, and though readers all over Western Europe had welcomed the novel(la) or short history as an alternative in the second half of the 17th century, only the English and the Spanish had, however, openly discredited the romance.
But the change of taste was brief and Fénelon's ''Telemachus'' 'Les Aventures de Télémaque''">Les_Aventures_de_Télémaque.html" ;"title="'Les Aventures de Télémaque">'Les Aventures de Télémaque''(1699/1700) already exploited a nostalgia for the old romances with their heroism and professed virtue. Jane Barker explicitly advertised her ''Exilius'' as "A new Romance", "written after the Manner of Telemachus", in 1715. Robinson Crusoe spoke of his own story as a "romance", though in the preface to the third volume, published in 1720, Defoe attacks all who said "that ..the Story is feign'd, that the Names are borrow'd, and that it is all a Romance; that there never were any such Man or Place".
The late 18th century brought an answer with the Romantic
Romantic may refer to:
Genres and eras
* The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries
** Romantic music, of that era
** Romantic poetry, of that era
** Romanticism in science, of that e ...
Movement's readiness to reclaim the word romance, with the gothic romance, and the historical novel
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...
s of Walter Scott. ''Robinson Crusoe'' now became a "novel" in this period, that is a work of the new realistic fiction created in the 18th century.
The sentimental novel
Sentimental novels relied on emotional responses, and feature scenes of distress and tenderness, and the plot is arranged to advance emotions rather than action. The result is a valorization of "fine feeling", displaying the characters as models of refined, sensitive emotional affect. The ability to display such feelings was thought at this time to show character and experience, and to help shape positive social life and relationships. An example of this genre is Samuel Richardson's '' Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded'' (1740), composed "to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes", which focuses on a potential victim, a heroine that has all the modern virtues and who is vulnerable because her low social status and her occupation as servant of a libertine who falls in love with her. She, however, ends in reforming her antagonist. Male heroes adopted the new sentimental character traits in the 1760s. Laurence Sterne's Yorick, the hero of the '' Sentimental Journey'' (1768) did so with an enormous amount of humour.Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, dramatist and poet, who is best known for his novel ''The Vicar of Wakefield'' (1766), his pastoral poem ''The Deserted Village'' (1770), and his pl ...
's ''Vicar of Wakefield
''The Vicar of Wakefield'', subtitled ''A Tale, Supposed to be written by Himself'', is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774). It was written from 1761 to 1762 and published in 1766. It was one of the most popular and w ...
'' (1766) and Henry Mackenzie
Henry Mackenzie FRSE (August 1745 – 14 January 1831, born and died in Edinburgh) was a Scottish lawyer, novelist and writer sometimes seen as the Addison of the North. While remembered mostly as an author, his main income came from legal role ...
's ''Man of Feeling'' (1771) produced the far more serious role models.
These works inspired a sub
Sub is a common abbreviation of words beginning with the prefix "sub-". Sub or SUB may also refer to
Places
* Juanda International Airport, Surabaya, Indonesia, IATA code SUB
Computing and technology
* , an HTML tag for subscript
* SUB designate ...
- and counterculture of pornographic novels, for which Greek and Latin authors in translations had provided elegant models from the last century. Pornography includes John Cleland's '' Fanny Hill'' (1748), which offered an almost exact reversal of the plot of novels that emphasised virtue. The prostitute Fanny Hill learns to enjoy her work and establishes herself as a free and economically independent individual, in editions one could only expect to buy under the counter.
Less virtuous protagonists can also be found in satirical novels, like Richard Head's ''English Rogue'' (1665), that feature brothels, while women authors like Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barrie ...
had offered their heroines alternative careers as precursors of the 19th-century femmes fatales
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
.
The genre evolves in the 1770s with, for example, Werther in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's '' The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774) realising that it is impossible for him to integrate into the new conformist society, and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos in '' Les Liaisons dangereuses'' (1782) showing a group of aristocrats playing games of intrigue and amorality..
The social context of the 18th century novel
Changing cultural status
By around 1700, fiction was no longer a predominantly aristocratic entertainment, and printed books had soon gained the power to reach readers of almost all classes, though the reading habits differed and to follow fashions remained a privilege. Spain was a trendsetter into the 1630s but French authors superseded Cervantes, de Quevedo, and Alemán in the 1640s. AsHuet
Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (also known as Helicopter Underwater Egress Training ); often abbreviated as HUET, pronounced ''hue-wet'', ''hue-way'' or ''you-way'') is training provided to helicopter flight crews, offshore oil and gas ind ...
was to note in 1670, the change was one of manners. The new French works taught a new, on the surface freer, gallant exchange between the sexes as the essence of life at the French court.
The situation changed again from 1660s into the 1690s when works by French authors were published in Holland out of the reach of French censors. Dutch publishing houses pirated fashionable books from France and created a new market of political and scandalous fiction. This led to a market of European rather than French fashions in the early 18th century.
By the 1680s fashionable political European novels had inspired a second wave of private scandalous publications and generated new productions of local importance. Women authors reported on politics and on their private love affairs in The Hague and in London. German students imitated them to boast of their private amours in fiction. The London, the anonymous international market of the Netherlands, publishers in Hamburg and Leipzig generated new public spheres. Once private individuals, such as students in university towns and daughters of London's upper class began to write novels based on questionable reputations, the public began to call for a reformation of manners.
An important development in Britain, at the beginning of the century, was that new journals like '' The Spectator'' and '' The Tatler'' reviewed novels. In Germany Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (, ; 22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and a representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the developmen ...
's ''Briefe, die neuste Literatur betreffend'' (1758) appeared in the middle of the century with reviews of art and fiction. By the 1780s such reviews played had an important role in introducing new works of fiction to the public.
Influenced by the new journals, reform became the main goal of the second generation of eighteenth century novelists. ''The Spectator'' Number 10 had stated that the aim was now "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses"). Constructive criticism of novels had until then been rare. The first treatise on the history of the novel was a preface to Marie de La Fayette's novel ''Zayde'' (1670).
A much later development was the introduction of novels into school and later university curricula.
The acceptance of novels as literature
The French churchman and scholar Pierre Daniel Huet's ''Traitté de l'origine des romans
Pierre Daniel Huet's Trai é de l'origine des Romans (''Treatise on the Origin of Novels'', or ''Romances'') can claim to be the first history of fiction. It was originally published in 1670 as preface to Marie de la Fayette's novel ''Zayde''. ...
'' (1670) laid the ground for a greater acceptance of the novel as literature, that is comparable to the classics
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
, in the early 18th century. The theologian had not only dared to praise fictions, but he had also explained techniques of theological interpretation of fiction, which was a novelty. Furthermore, readers of novels and romances could gain insight not only into their own culture, but also that of distant, exotic countries.
When the decades around 1700 saw the appearance of new editions of the classical authors Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Lucian Lucian of Samosata, '; la, Lucianus Samosatensis ( 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer Pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets, unbound (and therefore ...
, and Heliodorus of Emesa. the publishers equipped them with prefaces that referred to Huet's treatise. and the canon it had established. Also exotic works of Middle Eastern fiction entered the market that gave insight into Islamic culture. '' The Book of One Thousand and One Nights'' was first published in Europe from 1704 to 1715 in French, and then translated immediately into English and German, and was seen as a contribution to Huet's history of romances.
The English, ''Select Collection of Novels in six volumes'' (1720–22), is a milestone in this development of the novel's prestige. It included Huet's ''Treatise'', along with the European tradition of the modern novel of the day: that is, novella from Machiavelli's to Lucian Lucian of Samosata, '; la, Lucianus Samosatensis ( 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer Pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets, unbound (and therefore ...
Marie de La Fayette
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette ( baptized 18 March 1634 – 25 May 1693), better known as Madame de La Fayette, was a French writer; she authored ''La Princesse de Clèves'', France's first historical novel and on ...
's masterpieces. Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barrie ...
's novels had appeared in the 1680s but became classics when reprinted in collections. Fénelon's ''Telemachus'' (1699/1700) became a classic three years after its publication. New authors entering the market were now ready to use their personal names rather than pseudonyms, including Eliza Haywood, who in 1719 following in the footsteps of Aphra Behn used her name with unprecedented pride.
19th-century novels
Romanticism
The very word romanticism is connected to the idea of romance, and the romance genre experienced a revival, at the end of the 18th century, with gothic fiction, that began in 1764 with Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician.
He had Strawb ...
's '' The Castle of Otranto'', subtitled (in its second edition) "A Gothic Story". Subsequent important gothic works are Ann Radcliffe's '' The Mysteries of Udolpho'' (1794) and 'Monk' Lewis's '' The Monk'' (1795).
The new romances challenged the idea that the novel involved a realistic depiction of life, and destabilized the difference the critics had been trying to establish, between serious classical art and popular fiction. Gothic romances exploited the grotesque, and some critics thought that their subject matter deserved less credit than the worst medieval tales of Arthurian knighthood.
The authors of this new type of fiction were accused of exploiting all available topics to thrill, arouse, or horrify their audience. These new romantic
Romantic may refer to:
Genres and eras
* The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries
** Romantic music, of that era
** Romantic poetry, of that era
** Romanticism in science, of that e ...
novelists, however, claimed that they were exploring the entire realm of fictionality. And psychological interpreters, in the early 19th century, read these works as encounters with the deeper hidden truth of the human imagination: this included sexuality, anxieties
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
, and insatiable desires. Under such readings, novels were described as exploring deeper human motives, and it was suggested that such artistic freedom would reveal what had not previously been openly visible.
The romances of de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer famous for his literary depictions of a libertine human sexuality, sexuality as well as n ...
, '' Les 120 Journées de Sodome'' (1785), Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widel ...
's ''Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
''Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque'' is a collection of previously published short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1840.
Publication
It was published by the Philadelphia firm Lea & Blanchard and released in two volumes. The pub ...
'' (1840), Mary Shelley, '' Frankenstein'' (1818), and E.T.A. Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann; 24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822) was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. Penrith Goff, "E.T.A. Hoffmann" in E ...
, ''Die Elixiere des Teufels
''The Devil's Elixirs'' (german: Die Elixiere des Teufels) is a novel by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Published in 1815, the basic idea for the story was adopted from Matthew Gregory Lewis's novel ''The Monk'', which is itself mentioned in the text.
A ...
'' (1815), would later attract 20th-century psychoanalysts and supply the images for 20th- and 21st-century horror films, love romances, fantasy novels, role-playing computer games, and the surrealists
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
.
The historical romance was also important at this time. But, while earlier writers of these romances paid little attention to historical reality, Walter Scott's historical novel
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...
'' Waverley'' (1814) broke with this tradition, and he invented "the true historical novel".''The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature'', ed. Marion Wynne Davis. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990, p. 885. At the same time he was influenced by gothic romance, and had collaborated in 1801 with 'Monk' Lewis on ''Tales of Wonder''. With his Waverley novels Scott "hoped to do for the Scottish border" what Goethe and other German poets "had done for the Middle Ages, "and make its past live again in modern romance". Scott's novels "are in the mode he himself defined as romance, 'the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents'".''The Norton Anthology of English Literature'', vol.2, 7th edition, ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 2000, pp. 20–21. He used his imagination to re-evaluate history by rendering things, incidents and protagonists in the way only the novelist could do. His work remained historical fiction, yet it questioned existing historical perceptions. The use of historical research was an important tool: Scott, the novelist, resorted to documentary sources as any historian would have done, but as a romantic he gave his subject a deeper imaginative and emotional significance. By combining research with "marvelous and uncommon incidents", Scott attracted a far wider market than any historian could, and was the most famous novelist of his generation, throughout Europe.
The Victorian period: 1837–1901
In the 19th century the relationship between authors, publishers, and readers, changed. Authors originally had only received payment for their manuscript, however, changes in copyright laws, which began in 18th and continued into the 19th century promised royalties on all future editions. Another change in the 19th century was that novelists began to read their works in theaters, halls, and bookshops. Also during the nineteenth century the market forpopular fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
A num ...
grew, and competed with works of literature. New institutions like the circulating library A circulating library (also known as lending libraries and rental libraries) lent books to subscribers, and was first and foremost a business venture. The intention was to profit from lending books to the public for a fee.
Overview
Circulating li ...
created a new market with a mass reading public.
Another difference was that novels began to deal with more difficult subjects, including current political and social issues, that were being discussed in newspapers and magazines. The idea of social responsibility became a key subject, whether of the citizen, or of the artist, with the theoretical debate concentrating on questions around the moral soundness of the modern novel. Questions about artistic integrity, as well as aesthetics, including, for example. the idea of " art for art's sake", proposed by writers like Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
and Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as ''Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition ...
, were also important.
Major British writers such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...
were influenced by the romance genre tradition of the novel, which had been revitalized during the Romantic period. The Brontë sisters were notable mid-19th-century authors in this tradition, with Anne Brontë's ''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'' is the second and final novel written by English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and ph ...
'', Charlotte Brontë's '' Jane Eyre'' and Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë (, commonly ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, ''Wuthering Heights'', now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poet ...
's '' Wuthering Heights''. Publishing at the very end of the 19th century, Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...
has been called "a supreme 'romancer.'" In America "the romance ... proved to be a serious, flexible, and successful medium for the exploration of philosophical ideas and attitudes." Notable examples include Nathaniel Hawthorne's '' The Scarlet Letter'', and Herman Melville's '' Moby-Dick''.''A Handbook of Literary Terms'', 7th edition, ed. Harmon and Holman (1995), p. 450.
A number of European novelists were similarly influenced during this period by the earlier romance tradition, along with the Romanticism, including Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...
, with novels like '' The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'' (1831) and '' Les Misérables'' (1862), and Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov with '' A Hero of Our Time'' (1840).
Many 19th-century authors dealt with significant social matters. Émile Zola's novels depicted the world of the working classes, which Marx and Engels's non-fiction explores. In the United States slavery and racism became topics of far broader public debate thanks to Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and became best known for her novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), which depicts the harsh ...
's '' Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), which dramatizes topics that had previously been discussed mainly in the abstract. Charles Dickens' novels led his readers into contemporary workhouses, and provided first-hand accounts of child labor. The treatment of the subject of war changed with Leo Tolstoy's '' War and Peace'' (1868/69), where he questions the facts provided by historians. Similarly the treatment of crime is very different in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's '' Crime and Punishment'' (1866), where the point of view is that of a criminal. Women authors had dominated fiction from the 1640s into the early 18th century, but few before George Eliot so openly questioned the role, education, and status of women in society, as she did.
As the novel became a platform of modern debate, national literatures were developed that link the present with the past in the form of the historical novel
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...
. Alessandro Manzoni's ''I Promessi Sposi
''The Betrothed'' ( it, I promessi sposi ) is an Italian Historical romance, historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni, first published in 1827 in literature, 1827, in three Volume (bibliography), volumes, and significantly revised and rewritten un ...
'' (1827) did this for Italy, while novelists in Russia and the surrounding Slavonic countries, as well as Scandinavia, did likewise.
Along with this new appreciation of history, the future also became a topic for fiction. This had been done earlier in works like Samuel Madden's ''Memoirs of the Twentieth Century
''Memoirs of the Twentieth Century'' is an early work of speculative fiction by Irish writer Samuel Madden. This 1733 epistolary novel takes the form of a series of diplomatic letters written in 1997 and 1998. The work is a satire perhaps model ...
'' (1733) and Mary Shelley's '' The Last Man'' (1826), a work whose plot culminated in the catastrophic last days of a mankind extinguished by the plague. Edward Bellamy's '' Looking Backward'' (1887) and H.G. Wells's '' The Time Machine'' (1895) were concerned with technological and biological developments. Industrialization
Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...
, Darwin
Darwin may refer to:
Common meanings
* Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection
* Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...
's theory of evolution and Marx's theory of class
Class or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
divisions shaped these works and turned historical processes into a subject of wide debate. Bellamy's ''Looking Backward'' became the second best-selling book of the 19th century after Harriet Beecher Stowe's '' Uncle Tom's Cabin''. Such works led to the development of a whole genre of popular science fiction as the 20th century approached.
20th century
Modernism and post-modernism
James Joyce's ''Ulysses
Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature.
Ulysses may also refer to:
People
* Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name
Places in the United States
* Ulysses, Kansas
* Ulysse ...
'' (1922) had a major influence on modern novelists, in the way that it replaced the 18th- and 19th-century narrator with a text that attempted to record inner thoughts, or a " stream of consciousness". This term was first used by William James in 1890 and, along with the related term interior monologue, is used by modernists
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
like Dorothy Richardson
Dorothy Miller Richardson (17 May 1873 – 17 June 1957) was a British author and journalist. Author of ''Pilgrimage'', a sequence of 13 semi-autobiographical novels published between 1915 and 1967—though Richardson saw them as chapters of o ...
, Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner. Also in the 1920s expressionist Alfred Döblin
Bruno Alfred Döblin (; 10 August 1878 – 26 June 1957) was a German novelist, essayist, and doctor, best known for his novel '' Berlin Alexanderplatz'' (1929). A prolific writer whose œuvre spans more than half a century and a wide variety of ...
went in a different direction with ''Berlin Alexanderplatz
''Berlin Alexanderplatz'' () is a 1929 novel by Alfred Döblin. It is considered one of the most important and innovative works of the Weimar Republic. In a 2002 poll of 100 noted writers the book was named among the top 100 books of all time.
...
'' (1929), where interspersed non-fictional text fragments exist alongside the fictional material to create another new form of realism, which differs from that of stream-of-consciousness.
Later works like Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
's trilogy ''Molloy
Molloy or O'Molloy is an Irish surname, anglicised from Ó Maolmhuaidh, maolmhuadh meaning 'Proud Chieftain'. (See also Malloy.) They were part of the southern Uí Néill, the southern branch of the large tribal grouping claiming descent from Ni ...
'' (1951), ''Malone Dies
''Malone Dies'' is a novel by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in 1951, in French, as ''Malone meurt'', and later translated into English by the author.
''Malone Dies'' contains the famous line, "Nothing is more real than nothing" – a ...
'' (1951) and '' The Unnamable'' (1953), as well as Julio Cortázar
Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ent ...
's '' Rayuela'' (1963) and Thomas Pynchon's '' Gravity's Rainbow'' (1973) all make use of the stream-of-consciousness technique. On the other hand, Robert Coover is an example of those authors who, in the 1960s, fragmented their stories and challenged time and sequentiality as fundamental structural concepts.
The 20th century novel deals with a wide range of subject matter. Erich Maria Remarque's ''All Quiet on the Western Front
''All Quiet on the Western Front'' (german: Im Westen nichts Neues, lit=Nothing New in the West) is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental trauma du ...
'' (1928) focusses on a young German's experiences of World War I. The Jazz Age is explored by American F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
by fellow American John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social ...
. Totalitarianism is the subject of British writer George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
's most famous novels. Existentialism is the focus of two writers from France: Jean-Paul Sartre with '' Nausea'' (1938) and Albert Camus with '' The Stranger'' (1942). The counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...
, with its exploration of altered states of consciousness, led to revived interest in the mystical works of Hermann Hesse'', such as Steppenwolf'' (1927), and produced iconic works of its own, for example Ken Kesey's ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest may refer to:
* ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (novel), a 1962 novel by Ken Kesey
* ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (play), a 1963 stage adaptation of the novel starring Kirk Douglas
* ''One Flew Over the ...
'' and Thomas Pynchon's '' Gravity's Rainbow''. Novelists have also been interested in the subject of racial and gender identity in recent decades. Jesse Kavadlo of Maryville University of St. Louis has described Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (; born February 21, 1962) is an American freelance journalist and novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adul ...
's '' Fight Club'' (1996) as "a closeted feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
critique". Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...
, Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...
, Elfriede Jelinek were feminist voices during this period.
Furthermore, the major political and military confrontations of the 20th and 21st centuries have also influenced novelists. The events of World War II, from a German perspective, are dealt with by Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (born Graß; ; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Da ...
' '' The Tin Drum'' (1959) and an American by Joseph Heller's '' Catch-22'' (1961). The subsequent Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
influenced popular spy novels
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligen ...
. Latin American self-awareness in the wake of the (failing) leftist revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a " Latin American Boom", linked to the names of novelists Julio Cortázar
Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ent ...
, Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa (, ), is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Ll ...
, Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez, along with the invention of a special brand of postmodern magic realism.
Another major 20th-century social event, the so-called sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1 ...
is reflected in the modern novel. D.H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
's ''Lady Chatterley's Lover
''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' is the last novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Italy, and in 1929, in France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, w ...
'' had to be published in Italy in 1928 with British censorship only lifting its ban as late as 1960. Henry Miller's '' Tropic of Cancer'' (1934) created a comparable US scandal. Transgressive fiction from Vladimir Nabokov's ''Lolita
''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humber ...
'' (1955) to Michel Houellebecq's ''Les Particules élémentaires
''Atomised'', also known as ''The Elementary Particles'' (french: Les Particules élémentaires), is a novel by the French author Michel Houellebecq, published in France in 1998. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, and ...
'' (1998) pushed the boundaries, leading to the mainstream publication of explicitly erotic works such as Anne Desclos' ''Story of O
''Story of O'' (french: Histoire d'O, link=no, ) is an erotic novel published in 1954 by French author Anne Desclos under the pen name Pauline Réage, and published in French by Jean-Jacques Pauvert.
Desclos did not reveal herself as the autho ...
'' (1954) and Anaïs Nin
Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (February 11, 1903 – January 14, 1977; , ) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the d ...
's '' Delta of Venus'' (1978).
In the second half of the 20th century, Postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
authors subverted serious debate with playfulness, claiming that art could never be original, that it always plays with existing materials. The idea that language is self-referential was already an accepted truth in the world of pulp fiction. A postmodernist re-reads popular literature as an essential cultural production. Novels from Thomas Pynchon's '' The Crying of Lot 49'' (1966), to Umberto Eco's '' The Name of the Rose'' (1980) and '' Foucault's Pendulum'' (1989) made use of intertextual
Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody,Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref>H ...
references.
Genre fiction
While the reader of so-called serious literature will follow public discussions of novels, popular fiction production employs more direct and short-term marketing strategies by openly declaring a work's genre. Popular novels are based entirely on the expectations for the particular genre, and this includes the creation of a series of novels with an identifiable brand name. e.g. theSherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...
series by Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...
.
Popular literature holds a larger market share. Romance fiction had an estimated $1.375 billion share in the US book market in 2007. Inspirational literature/religious literature followed with $819 million, science fiction/ fantasy with $700 million, mystery with $650 million and then classic literary fiction with $466 million.
Genre literature might be seen as the successor of the early modern chapbook
A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch.
In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookle ...
. Both fields share a focus on readers who are in search of accessible reading satisfaction. The twentieth century love romance is a successor of the novels Madeleine de Scudéry
Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer.
Her works also demonstrate such comprehensive knowledge of ancient history that it is suspected she had received inst ...
, Marie de La Fayette
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette ( baptized 18 March 1634 – 25 May 1693), better known as Madame de La Fayette, was a French writer; she authored ''La Princesse de Clèves'', France's first historical novel and on ...
, Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barrie ...
, and Eliza Haywood wrote from the 1640s into the 1740s. The modern adventure novel goes back to Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...
's '' Robinson Crusoe'' (1719) and its immediate successors. Modern pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,
has no precedent in the chapbook market but originates in libertine and hedonistic belles lettres, of works like John Cleland's '' Fanny Hill'' (1749) and similar eighteenth century novels. Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...
's '' James Bond'' is a descendant of the anonymous yet extremely sophisticated and stylish narrator who mixed his love affairs with his political missions in ''La Guerre d'Espagne'' (1707). Marion Zimmer Bradley's '' The Mists of Avalon'' is influenced by Tolkien, as well as Arthurian literature
The Matter of Britain is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur. It was one of the three great Western ...
, including its nineteenth century successors. Modern horror fiction also has no precedent on the market of chapbooks but goes back to the elitist market of early nineteenth century Romantic literature
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
. Modern popular science fiction has an even shorter history, from the 1860s.
The authors of popular fiction tend to advertise that they have exploited a controversial topic and this is a major difference between them and so-called elitist literature. Dan Brown, for example, discusses, on his website, the question whether his ''Da Vinci Code'' is an anti-Christian novel. And because authors of popular fiction have a fan community to serve, they can risk offending literary critics. However, the boundaries between popular and serious literature have blurred in recent years, with postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
and poststructuralism
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...
, as well as by adaptation of popular literary classics by the film and television industries.
Crime became a major subject of 20th and 21st century genre novelists and crime fiction reflects the realities of modern industrialized societies. Crime is both a personal and public subject: criminals each have their personal motivations; detectives, see their moral codes challenged. Patricia Highsmith's thrillers became a medium of new psychological explorations. Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include ''The New York Trilogy'' (1987), ''Moon Palace'' (1989), ''The Music of Chance'' (1990), ''The Book of Illusions'' (2002), ''The Broo ...
's ''New York Trilogy
''The New York Trilogy'' is a series of novels by American writer Paul Auster. Originally published sequentially as ''City of Glass'' (1985), ''Ghosts'' (1986) and ''The Locked Room'' (1986), it has since been collected into a single volume. Th ...
'' (1985–1986) is an example of experimental postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
ist literature based on this genre.
Fantasy is another major area of commercial fiction, and a major example is J. R. R. Tolkien's '' The Lord of the Rings'' (1954/55), a work originally written for young readers that became a major cultural artefact. Tolkien in fact revived the tradition of European epic
Epic commonly refers to:
* Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation
* Epic film, a genre of film with heroic elements
Epic or EPIC may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and medi ...
literature in the tradition of Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
, the North Germanic Edda and the Arthurian Cycles.
Science fiction is another important type of genre fiction and has developed in a variety of ways, ranging from the early, technological adventure Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...
had made fashionable in the 1860s, to Aldous Huxley's '' Brave New World'' (1932) about Western consumerism and technology. George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
's '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949) deals with totalitarianism and surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...
, among other matters, while Stanisław Lem, Isaac Asimov
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, birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR
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, relatives =
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, death_date =
, death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
, nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...
and Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Spac ...
produced modern classics which focus on the interaction between humans and machines. The surreal novels of Philip K Dick
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his l ...
such as '' The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch'' explore the nature of reality, reflecting the widespread recreational experimentation with drugs and cold-war paranoia of the 60's and 70's. Writers such as Ursula le Guin and Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nin ...
explore feminist and broader social issues in their works. William Gibson, author of the cult classic '' Neuromancer'' (1984), is one of a new wave of authors who explore post-apocalyptic fantasies and virtual reality.
21st century
Non-traditional formats
A major development in this century has been novels published as ebooks, and the growth of web fiction, which is available primarily or solely on the Internet. A common type is the web serial: unlike most modern novels, web fiction novels are frequently published in parts over time. Ebooks are often published with a paper version. Audio books (a recording of a book reading) have also become common this century. Another non-traditional format, popular this century, is the graphic novel. However, though a graphic novel may be "a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and published as a book", it can also refers to non-fiction and collections of short works. While the term graphic novel was coined in the 1960s there were precursors in the 19th century. The authorJohn Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth ...
, when he spoke to the Bristol Literary Society in 1969, on "the death of the novel The ''death of the novel'' is the common name for the theoretical discussion of the declining importance of the novel as literary form. Many 20th century authors entered into the debate, often sharing their ideas in their own fiction and non-ficti ...
", declared that he saw "no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece". A popular Japanese version of the graphic novel can be found in manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
, and such works of fiction can be published in online versions.
Audiobooks have been available since the 1930s in schools and public libraries, and to a lesser extent in music shops. Since the 1980s this medium has become more widely available, including more recently online.
Web fiction is especially popular in China, with revenues topping US$2.5 billion, as well as in South Korea. Online literature such as web fiction inside China has over 500 million readers, therefore, online literature in China plays a much more important role than in the United States and the rest of the world. Most books are available online, where the most popular novels find millions of readers. Joara is S. Korea's largest web novel platform with 140,000 writers, with an average of 2,400 serials per day and 420,000 works. The company posted 12.5 billion won in sales in 2015 as profits were generated from 2009. Its membership is 1.1 million, and it uses 8.6 million cases a day on average (2016). Since Joara's users have almost the same gender ratio, both fantasy and romance forms of genre fiction are in high demand.
The development of ebooks and web novels has led to a rapid expansion of self-published works in recent years. Authors who self-publish can make more money than through a traditional publisher.
However, despite the challenges from digital media print remains "the most popular book format among U.S. consumers, with more than 60 percent of adults having read a print book in the last twelve months".
See also
*Chain novel
A chain novel or chain story is a type of collaborative fiction written collectively by a group of authors. The novel is passed along from author to author, each adding a new chapter or section to the work, with the rule that each subsequent chapt ...
* Children's literature; Young adult fiction
* Collage novel
Collage novel is used by different writers and readers to describe three different kinds of novel: 1) a form of artist's book approaching closely (but preceding) the graphic novel; 2) a literary novel that approaches "collage" metaphorically, juxt ...
* Gay literature
* Graphic novel
* Light novel
* Nautical fiction
* Novel in Scotland
The novel in Scotland includes all long prose fiction published in Scotland and by Scottish authors since the development of the literary format in the eighteenth century. The novel was soon a major element of Scottish literary and critical life. T ...
* Proletarian novel
Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-conscious proletariat. Though the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is t ...
* Psychological novel
* Sociology of literature
* Social novel
The social novel, also known as the social problem (or social protest) novel, is a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". More ...
* War novel
References
Further reading
Theories of the novel * Bakhtin, Mikhail. ''About novel''.The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
'. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981. ritten during the 1930s* * * Updated edition of pioneering typology and history of over 50 genres; index of types and technique, and detailed chronology. * McKeon, Michael, ''Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Histories of the novel * * * * * * Heiserman, Arthur Ray. ''The Novel Before the Novel'' (Chicago, 1977) * * Mentz, Steve (2006). ''Romance for sale in early modern England: the rise of prose fiction''. Aldershot: Ashgate. * Moore, Steven (2013). ''The Novel: An Alternative History''. Vol. 1, Beginnings to 1600: Continuum, 2010. Vol. 2, 1600–1800: Bloomsbury. * * from Leah Price * Relihan, Constance C. (ed.), ''Framing Elizabethan fictions: contemporary approaches to early modern narrative prose'' (Kent, Ohio/ London: Kent State University Press, 1996). * Roilos, Panagiotis, ''Amphoteroglossia: A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medieval Greek Novel'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005). * Rubens, Robert, "A hundred years of fiction: 1896 to 1996. (The English Novel in the Twentieth Century, part 12)." Contemporary Review, December 1996. * Schmidt, Michael, ''The Novel: A Biography'' (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
, 2014).
*
External links
''The novel 1780-1832''
at the British Library
''The novel 1832-1880''
at the British Library
''The House of the Seven Gables'' with "Preface"
* {{Authority control Fiction Fiction forms Prose Media formats Literary terminology