A (Ridiculously) Short History of the Novel

Early Prose Narratives

• Boccaccio’s Decameron (1351-1353)

• Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (c. 1469)

• Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1605)

English Novel• Initially, distinction between novel

and so-called "romance" or allegory– “Romance of the Rose,” other medieval tales of gallantry and royalty– “Pilgrim’s Progress” (allegory)

• “The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in lofty and elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen.” Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, 1785

Until late in the 18th Century . . .

• Crudely defined as:

– tales shorter than traditional romances

– a plot of love and intrigue

Aphra Behn

• Oroonoko (1688)• Prolific writer of plays and

other texts• First woman writer to make

a living from her writing (in addition to much else . . .)

Daniel Defoe• In Robinson Crusoe (1719) and

Moll Flanders (1722), he establishes many of the conventions of the English novel– a dominant unifying theme with a

serious thesis– convincing realism (through an

almost-journalistic first-person narrative)

– a middle class viewpoint

Samuel Richardson

• In Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747) he establishes the psychological study of a character within the novel.

Henry Fielding

• Arguably first pure “novelist” (Defoe posed his as histories, Richardson as moral parables)

• Tom Jones contains internal essay on the definition of the English novel

Jane Austen

• JANE AUSTEN• more in common with the novelists of the

18th century than early 19th century. • novelist of manners.• Pride and Prejudice (c. 1812) etc.

Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel

• Philosophical background of the novel– Descartes and Locke, truth discovered by the

individual through his or her senses. Individual apprehension of reality.

• individualist, innovating reorientation

• Rejection of traditional plots• independence from traditional notions of the

"universality" of human nature and human rituals.

• Self-consciousness about innovation and novelty.

Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel

• Particularity– Specificity in setting– Character development• Emphasis on personality of character, consciousness

through duration in time: interpenetration of past and present self-awareness.• Manifests itself most strongly in characterization and

presentation of background.

Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel

• Adaptation of the prose style to give an illusion of complete authenticity– "The previous stylistic tradition for fiction was not

primarily concerned with the correspondence of words and things, but rather with the extrinsic beauties which could be bestowed upon description and action by the use of rhetoric." (28)

Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel

• "The narrative method whereby the novel embodies this circumstantial view of life may be called its formal realism; formal, because the term realism does not here refer to any special literary doctrine or purpose, but only to a set of narrative procedures which are so commonly found together in the novel, and so rarely in other literary genres, that they may be regarded as typical of the form itself.“ (32)

Formal “Realism”

• Believability• Familiarity• Individualism, subjectivity• Object of identification (“relatability”)

J. Paul Hunter: Before Novels

J. Paul Hunter: Before Novels

• Coherence and unity of design• Inclusivity digressivenes, fragmentation. • Fielding in Tom Jones: "I intend to digress,

through this whole History as often as l see Occasion: Of which I am myself a better Judge than any pitiful Critic whatever" (1. ii. 37)

Why the “rise of the novel”

• Restoration of monarchy (post-Puritan)• Appearance of periodicals• Rise of middle class• Leisure time for middle class• Growing audience of literate women

Deception . . .

• Each novel asks you to enter a world– For most early novels, this was a problem of

verisimilitude (Richardson, Defoe as “discoverers” of the narrative . . .)

– Realism “is the form that seeks to merge itself so thoroughly with the world that its status as art is suppressed” (Eagleton, 10)

– This convention is later played with (Sterne’s Tristram Shandy), undermined, and ultimately ignored.

OroonokoI do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave,

to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet's pleasure; nor in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents but such as arrived in earnest to him: and it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues; there being enough of reality to support it, and to render it diverting, without the addition of invention.

I was myself an eye-witness to a great part of what you will find here set down; and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself . . .

Robinson Crusoe• Full title: The Life and Strange Surprising

Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York. Mariner; who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates. Written by Himself.

Preface to ClarissaDifferent persons, as might be expected, have been of different

opinions, in relation to the conduct of the Heroine in particular situations; and several worthy persons have objected to the general catastrophe, and other parts of the history. Whatever is thought material of these shall be taken notice of by way of Postscript, at the conclusion of the History; for this work being addressed to the public as a history of life and manners, those parts of it which are proposed to carry with them the force of an example, ought to be as unobjectionable as is consistent with the design of the whole, and with human nature.

Basic Questions to ask when reading a novel . . .

• Who is telling the story? Does this shift? If so, why? How does this affect my understanding of the events being described?

• What is the narrative POV? How does this affect my understanding of the events being described? Why might the author have chosen this POV over another?

Speaker

• What kind of speaker are we given? Omniscient? Limited? Young/old? How does their diction inflect or demonstrate (or undermine) their understanding of the events being described?

Setting

• Where are the events of the novel set? Is there any symbolic aspect that might be reinforcing some the themes (hint: there almost always are . . .) Geographic? Historical? Temporal?

• Can I make a list of the most important locations in the text? How are they connected, if at all?

Symbolism

• What are some of the major symbols that the novel develops to reinforce its themes? (things, people, places etc.)

The "world" of the novel

• What sort of world is the author asking us to enter? Is it "realistic" in the sense that it conforms to a popular understanding of an objectively "shared" world?

• Does it willfully violate some of our expectations about what is “normal” or “real”? To what purpose might it be doing so?

Repetition/Patterns

• What’s repeated? Phrases? Settings? Ideas/philosophical positions? Characters? Actions? (etc.)

• Novels as symbolic system where meaning accumulates through repetition and resonance.