Novels set in Washington, D.C.

A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.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, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term ''romance''. Such romances should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love. 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, like Harper Lee's ''To Kill a Mockingbird''. The romance, on the other hand, encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. In reality, such works are nevertheless also commonly called novels, including Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein'' and J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''.

The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of the vernacular classic Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was ''Hayy ibn Yaqdhan'' by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. 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.''Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature''. Kathleen Kuiper, ed. 1995. Merriam-Webster, Springfield, Mass. Literary historian Ian Watt, 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 ebooks. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels. While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently.

Defining the genre

A novel is a long, fictional narrative. The novel in the modern era 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: Fictionality 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 written by Hữu Mai, were designed to be and defined as a "non-fiction" novel which purposefully recorded historical facts in the form of a novel.
*Literary prose: While prose rather than verse became the standard of the modern novel, the ancestors of the modern European novel include verse epics in the Romance language of southern France, especially those by Chrétien de Troyes (late 12th century), and in Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer's ( – 1400) ''The Canterbury Tales''). 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's '' Aurora Leigh'' (1856), competed with prose novels. Vikram Seth'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'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. 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. However, according to the English novelist E. M. Forster, a novel should be composed with at least fifty-thousand words.

East Asian definition

East Asian countries, like China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan, use the word (variant Traditional Chinese and Shinjitai: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Hangeul: ; Pinyin: ; Jyutping: ; Wugniu: ; Peh-oe-ji: ; Hepburn: ; Revised: ; Vietnamese: ), which literally means "small talks" or "little talks", to refer to works of fiction of whatever length. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures, the concept of novel as it is understood in the Western 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, the ancient definition of "small talks" merely refers 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. Later scholars also provided a similar definition, such as Han dynasty historian Ban Gu, who categorized all the trivial stories and gossips collected by local government magistrates as "small talks".

Hồ Nguyên Trừng classified his memoir collection Nam Ông mộng lục as "small talks" clearly with the meaning of "trivial facts" rather than the Western definition of novel. Such classification also left a strong legacy in interpretations of the Western definition of “novel” at the time when Western literature was first introduced to East Asian countries. For example, Thanh Lãng and Nhất Linh classified the epic poems such as The Tale of Kiều as "novel", while Trần Chánh Chiếu emphasized the "belongs to the commoners", "trivial daily talks" aspect in one of his work.

In Korea and Japan, stand out as a separate genre. Depending on their length, Korean works in the genre of can be divided into novels (), novellas (), short stories (), and very short stories (; from French '; ; or ).

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'' (mid 1st century), which is "arguably the earliest surviving Western novel", as well as Petronius' ''Satyricon'', Lucian's '' True Story'', Apuleius' ''The Golden Ass'', and the anonymous '' Aesop Romance'' and '' Alexander Romance.'' These works were often influenced by oral traditions, such as storytelling and myth-making, and reflected the cultural, social, and political contexts of their time. Afterwards, their style was adapted in later Byzantine novels 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 India during the 5th through 8th centuries. ''Vasavadatta'' by Subandhu, '' Daśakumāracarita'' and '' Avantisundarīkathā'' by Daṇḍin, and '' Kadambari'' by Banabhatta are among notable works. These narrative forms were influenced by much older classical Sanskrit plays and Indian classical drama literature, as well as by oral traditions and religious texts.

In China

The 7th-century Chinese narrative prose work '' You Xian Ku'' written by Zhang Zhuo is considered by some to be one of the earliest "romances" or "novels" of the Tang dynasty, and it was influential on later works of fiction in East Asia.

Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song dynasty (960–1279) led to the evolution of oral storytelling, '' chuanqi'' and ''huaben'', into long-form multi-volume vernacular fictional novels by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).

Medieval period: 1100–1500

The European developments of the novel did not occur until after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439, and the rise of the publishing industry over a century later. Long European works continued to be in poetry in the 16th century. The modern European novel is often said to have begun with ''Don Quixote'' in 1605. Another important early novel was the French pastoral novel ''L'Astrée'' by Honore d'Urfe, published in 1610.

Chivalric romances

Romance or chivalric romance is a type of narrative in prose or verse popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight-errant with heroic qualities, who undertakes a quest, yet it is "the emphasis on heterosexual love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the and other kinds of epic, which involve heroism." In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love.

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