The Novel

A Short Course for English 1302 Students Central Texas College Dr. Brenda Cornell

Definition

A novel is loosely defined as a long work of fictional prose (Roberts and Jacobs 1622). Kennedy and Gioia add the desire of the novelist to create a sense of reality (298). In other words, a novel encompasses plot, theme, character, setting, point of viewall of the fictional elements of a short story. The major difference is its length.

Beginnings
The novels beginning dates from 16th and 17th century Spain, Italy, and France. These romances were largely concerned with adventure (Roman is the French word meaning novel.) In England, writers borrowed the term novel from the French and Italian writers, in order to describe these works and to distinguish them from the medieval and classical works; something that was new (novel), in other words.

Beginnings (continued)
In

America, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his preface to The House of the Seven Gables (1851), limited the scope of the novel not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of [mans] experience. Yet Hawthorne named his own early novels as romances for their other-wordly qualities (an example is The Scarlet Letter).

Verisimilitude

Many novelists have been concerned with the aura of possibility they have tried to createto the extent of invention of various devices designed to persuade the reader that the work is based on truth. References to real people and real events are used. Max Apples 1987 novel, The Propheteers, includes as major characters Walt Disney, Howard Johnson, C. W. Post, and Clarence Birdseye. Apple mixes historical fact with creative invention; the result is strange enough to seem actually true.

Epistolary Novels

Many early novels were written in the form of letters. An early English novel, Pamela (1740), was written by Samuel Richardson, who wanted to portray a story that emerged from real documents.

A modern epistolary novel

The

Color Purple (1982), by Alice Walker, narrates the struggles of Celie through letters to her sister and letters to God.

Nonfiction Novel
Popular

in the 1960s Author presents actual people and events in story form
Examples:

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood Norman Mailer, The Executioners Song

Historical Novel
A

detailed retelling of life in another time period and perhaps another place is often an exciting background for stories of love and heroic adventure

History

Reflects

a striving for historical truth

Examples of Historical Novels (American)

Hawthorne,

The Scarlet Letter Melville, Moby Dick Crane, The Red Badge of Courage Mitchell, Gone With the Wind Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls Faulkner, A Fable

Apprenticeship Novel (Bildungsroman)

Novel of growth and development; portrays the adventures of a cavorite-lis n GET f tg/stores/d communit rate-item cust-rec just-say-no true m/justsay young person struggling toward maturity Example: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Picaresque Novel

A loose, rambling succession of adventures that happen to a likeable scoundrel, who lives by his wits and loves to fool the ordinary people. Example: Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Roman a clef

From the French, meaning novel with a key, this type of story presents real people and events thinly disguised. Hemingway scholars contend that all of Hemingways novels have this trait, to some extent. Examples include:

Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Fitzgerald, Tender is the NIght

Conclusion
As

the newest genre of written literature, the novel has an excellent future. Each year, new novels continue to appear by the thousandsindeed, something for every readers taste. In turn, many are adapted into film, to reach a still more numerous and varied audience.

Works Cited

Kennedy, X. J. and Dana Gioia. Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 8th edition. NY: Longman, 2002. Roberts, Edgar V. and Henry E. Jacobs. Literature: an Introduction to Reading and Writing. 6th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1974.