Genre B: History of the Novel

History of the Novel

Novel

Genre: Fiction, Narrative

Style: Prose

Length: Extended

Purpose: Resembles Truth

Novel is a relatively recent literary creation

Precursors

Heroic Epics: Illiad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Beowulf

Greek + Roman Romances + Novels

Oriental Frame Tales

Irish + Icelandic Sagas

Medieval European Romances

Elizabethan Prose Fiction

Travel Adventures

Novelle

Moral Tales

First Novels

11^th Century Japan: The Tale of Genji

Life of 10th Century Heian Court

16^th Century China: Monkey, Water Margin & Romance of Three Kingdoms

Historical novels written in commoner’s language

17th Century Spain: Don Quixote

First European Novel

Psychology of mid-life crises

1679 France: The Princess of Cleves

First European Historical Novel

First novel of analysis dissecting emotions and attitudes

1683 England: Love Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister

1719 England: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders & A Journal of the Plague Year

1740 England: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded

Modernism: International Artistic Movement

Radical experimentation and rejection of old order of civilization and 19^소 century optimism

Novels: How things are perceived rather than what is perceived

James Joyce, Dorothy, Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner

Ÿ Post-Modernism: Post 1970’s – contemporary culture, technology, and art

Ÿ Information Technology, electronic images, and popular arts

Ÿ Rejects difficulty of Modernism

Ÿ Fragmentation and incoherence

Emphasis on Reflexivity: Fictions about fiction

Post-colonial literature: encounter of different cultures, world views and perceptions of reality

1) Name 2 antecedents of the novel.

2) What is arguably the first novel? Specify the country and time period

3) Which events or movements influenced a change in the style of novels?

- Miss. Luo