A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, normally written in prose form, and which is

typically published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the
Italian novella for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the Latin novella, a
singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new".[1] Walter Scott
made a distinction between the novel, in which (as he saw it) "events are accommodated to the
ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society" and the romance, which he defined as
"a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon
incidents".[2] However, many such romances, including the historical romances of Scott,[3] Emily
Brontë's Wuthering Heights[4] and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick,[5] are also frequently called novels,
and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". This sort of romance is in turn different from the
genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between
romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo, en roman."[6] Most European
languages use the word "romance" (as in French, Dutch, Russian, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian,
Danish, Swedish and Norwegian "roman"; Finnish "romaani"; German "Roman"; Portuguese "romance"
and Italian "romanzo") for extended narratives.

The novel constitutes "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years",[7] with
its origins in classical Greece and Rome, in medieval and early modern romance, and in the tradition of
the Italian renaissance novella. (Since the 18th century, the term "novella", or "novelle" in German, has
been used in English and other European languages to describe a long short story or a short novel.)

Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as
the world's first novel, but there is considerable debate over this — there were certainly long fictional
works much earlier. Spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels
by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Parallel European 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.[8] Ian Watt, in The
Rise of the Novel (1957), suggested that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.

Contents

1 Defining the genre

2 History

2.1 Early novels

2.2 Medieval period 1100–1500

 2.2.1 Chivalric romances

2.2.2 The novella

2.3 Renaissance period: 1500–1700

2.3.1 Chapbooks

2.3.2 Heroic romances

2.3.3 Satirical romances

2.3.4 Histories

2.3.5 Cervantes and the modern novel

2.4 18th century novels

2.4.1 Philosophical novel

2.4.2 The romance genre in the 18th century

2.4.3 The sentimental novel

2.4.4 The social context of the 18th century novel

2.4.4.1 Changing cultural status

2.4.4.2 The acceptance of novels as literature

2.5 19th century novels

2.5.1 Romanticism

2.5.2 The Victorian period: 1837–1901

2.6 The 20th century and later

2.6.1 Modernism and post-modernism

2.7 Genre fiction

3 See also

4 References

5 Further reading

6 External links
Defining the genre

Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book (François Boucher, 1756)

A novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human experiences. 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.

A 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.

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 (c. 1343 – 1400) The
Canterbury Tales).[9] 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.[10]

Content: intimate experience

Both in 12th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations.
On the other hand, verse epics, including the Odyssey and Aeneid, had been recited to a 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
requirement of length has been traditionally connected with the notion that a novel should encompass
the "totality of life."[11]

History

Early novels

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See also: Ancient Greek novel and Byzantine novel

Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century,
17th-century depiction

Although early forms of the novel are to be found in a number of places, including classical Rome, 10th–
and 11th-century Japan, and Elizabethan England, the European novel is often said to have begun with
Don Quixote in 1605.[8]

Early novels include works in Greek like and the Life of Aesop (c. 620 – 564 BCE), Lucian (c. 125 – after
180 AD)'s A True Story, the Alexander Romance and later novels Chariton's Callirhoe (mid-1st century),
Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon (early-2nd century), Longus' Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century),
Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian Tale (late-2nd century), and Heliodorus of Emesa's Aethiopica (third
century), which inspire writers of medieval novels such Hysimine and Hysimines by Eustathios
Makrembolites, Rodanthe and Dosikles by Theodore Prodromos and Drosilla and Charikles by Niketas
Eugenianos and Arístandros and Kallithéa by Constantine Manasses; works in Latin, such as the
Satyricon by Petronius (c. 50 AD), and The Golden Ass by Apuleius (c. 150 AD); works in Sanskrit such as
the 4th or 5th century Vasavadatta by Subandhu, 6th– or 7th-century Daśakumāracarita and
Avantisundarīkathā by Daṇḍin, and in the 7th-century Kadambari by Banabhatta, Murasaki Shikibu's
11th-century Japanese work The Tale of Genji, the 12th-century Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (or Philosophus
Autodidactus, the 17th-century Latin title) by Ibn Tufail, who wrote in Arabic, the 13th-century
Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis, another Arabic novelist, and Blanquerna, written in Catalan by
Ramon Llull (1283), and the 14th-century Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo
Guanzhong.[12]

Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji (1010) has been described as the world's first novel[13][14] and shows
essentially all the qualities for which Marie de La Fayette's novel La Princesse de Clèves (1678) has been
praised: individuality of perception, an interest in character development, and psychological
observation.[15] Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song Dynasty (960–1279) China led to
the evolution of oral storytelling into fictional novels by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Parallel
European developments did not occur until after the invention of the printing press by Johannes
Gutenberg in 1439, and the rise of the publishing industry over a century later allowed for similar
opportunities.[16]

By contrast, Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Ibn al-Nafis' Theologus Autodidactus are works of didactic
philosophy and theology. In this sense, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan would be considered an early example of a
philosophical novel,[17][18] while Theologus Autodidactus would be considered an early theological
novel.[19] Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, with its story of a human outcast surviving on an island, is also likely to
have influenced Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), because the work was available in an English
edition in 1711.[20]

Epic poetry exhibits some similarities with the novel, and the Western tradition of the novel reaches
back into the field of verse epics, though again not in an unbroken tradition. The epics of Asia, such as
the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (1300–1000 BC), and Indian epics such as the Ramayana (400 BCE and
200 CE), and Mahabharata (4th century BC) were as unknown in early modern Europe as was the Anglo-
Saxon epic of Beowulf (c. 750–1000 AD), which was rediscovered in the late 18th century and early 19th
century. Other non-European works, such as the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible, are full of stories, and
thus have also had a significant influence on the development of prose narratives, and therefore the
novel. Then at the beginning of the 18th century, French prose translations brought Homer's works to a
wider public, who accepted them as forerunners of the novel.