Novel

I

Introduction

Novel, fictional prose narrative in which characters and situations are depicted within the framework of a plot. This form (genre) constitutes the third stage in the development of imaginative fiction, following the epic and the romance, both largely absorbed but never entirely displaced. The word novel (Latin, novellus, diminutive of novus, “new”) appears to have been applied during the early Renaissance to any new story. The term novella was applied by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio to the short, anecdotal prose narratives in his Il Decamerone (written 1348-1353). When his tales were translated, as The Decameron (1620), the term novel itself passed into the English language.

Modern narratives of this kind are categorized as part of the overall genre of fiction, which itself began to subdivide into sub-genres towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, including the thriller, detective fiction, science fiction, romance, spy fiction, and so forth. Somewhat confusingly, novels within sub-genres of fiction of this kind are often referred to as genre fiction. Serious or literary fiction is generally considered separately, but from the 1960s a marked hybridity (or mixing of forms) has meant that often the boundaries are both looser and more blurred.

II

Origins of the Novel

Fiction narratives in prose were composed throughout the ancient world, and to these the term novel has been indiscriminately applied. Many tales that subsequently became part of the European literary tradition originated in Egypt. In India the novel probably can be said to have a precursor in the Daśakumāracarita (Tales of Ten Princes), a prose romance by Dandin, a Sanskrit writer of the late 6th century ad. In Japan what many scholars regard as the first real novel, The Tale of Genji (11th century; trans. 1925-1933), was written by Murasaki Shikibu. What are often now called novels had a considerable vogue among the Greeks in the early centuries of the Christian era. Worthy of mention are the Ephesiaca by Xenophon of Ephesus (4th century bc); Daphnis and Chloë, the most exquisite of the pastoral romances, generally attributed to Longus (2nd century ad); and the Aethiopica by Heliodorus of Emesa, Syria (3rd century ad). The chief examples of “novels” written in Latin are the Satyricon, which is generally considered the work of Gaius Petronius Arbiter (1st century ad), and the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius (2nd century ad).

The long narrative verse tale, the equally voluminous prose romance, and the Old French fabliau flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages, contributing to the development of the novel. Advances in realism were made in Spain during the 16th century with the so-called picaresque, or rogue, story, in which the protagonist is a merry vagabond who goes through a series of realistic and exciting adventures. Examples are the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and Guzmán de Alfarache (Pt. I, 1599; Pt. II, 1604/The Spanish Rogue, 1623) by Mateo Alemán. In 1605 (Part I) and 1615 (Part II) the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes published what is considered the first great novel of the Western world, Don Quixote (trans. Pt. I, 1612; Pt. II, 1620). It recounts the adventures of a country gentleman driven mad by reading chivalric romances, which he accepts as factual. A further advance in psychological realism was made by the Comtesse de la Fayette in La Princesse de Clèves (1678). In The Pilgrim's Progress (Part I, 1678; Part II, 1684), John Bunyan observes the way of the world and its characters with such brilliance that his religious allegory can be regarded as a realistic novel.

III

18th Century: The Rise of the Novel

As the novel became increasingly popular during the 18th century, writers examined society with greater depth and breadth, writing revealingly about people living within, or escaping from, the pressures of society. Criticism was implicit of characters attempting to ignore society and its conventions, and of society for failing to satisfy human aspirations.

A

The British Masters

Five figures in the 18th century—Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne—created the first classic British novels, setting high standards and models for later work in this genre. In Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-1748), written in the form of letters exchanged between lovers, friends, and kinsmen, Richardson brought to a traditional theme of the older romances—a young woman's defence of her chastity—a psychological realism rarely surpassed. Fielding, in Joseph Andrews (1742), Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia (1751), depicts contemporary life and morals with generosity combined with great classical learning, enabling him to achieve what he called “comic epic”. Smollett's Roderick Random (1748) follows a picaresque hero against a vivid panorama of lower-class society. His The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) is gentler in its social criticism, but the comedy is merciless in its depiction of human foibles and vanities. Between 1759 and 1767 Sterne turned the novel inside out with his comic masterpiece The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, in which the hero, who is the narrator, is not born until halfway through the book. Sterne had no real successors until James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, who investigated the relations between life on the one hand and literature and language on the other.