The Novel

What is a Novel?

“A lengthy, written, prose narrative with a protagonist.”

- Jane Smiley

Prose:“Prose slips by, common as

water…Poetry, in its search for concentration and sharp effect, contracts. In prose, one thought leads to another - it expands. [It]

is naturally narrative.” - JS

What is Narrative?

What is Narrative?

“the telling of a story.”

“As soon as we follow a subject with a verb, there is a good chance we are

engaged in narrative discourse. ‘I fell down,’ the child cries and in the process

tells her mother a little narrative.”

-H. Porter Abbot

Why is Narrative Important?

“Narrative capability shows up in infants in their third or fourth year [and] coincides roughly with the first memories that are

retained by adults of their infancy. In other words, we do not have any mental record of

who we are until narrative is present. If this is so, then ‘our very definition as human

beings…is very much bound up with the stories we tell about our own lives and the

world we live in.” -H. Porter Abbot

What is the difference between a story and a plot?

“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time

sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis on causality. ‘The

king died and then the queen died’is a story. The king died and then the

queen died of grief’ is a plot.” - E. M. Forster

Narrative and Narrator:“Perhaps the most important thing about narrative is that it introduces the voice of

the narrator…Some narrators offend, some narrators appeal, but all narrators

are present, the author but not the author, the protagonist but not the protagonist,

an intermediary that the author and reader must deal with.” - JS

Narrative and Protagonist:“When the protagonist enters, a novel becomes specific and even peculiar…The prose, like the narrative, must be appropriate to the protagonist. It must express something about him that it could not express about any other

protagonist.” - JS

Narration (Example 1):“My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate*, and in the Old Bailey*, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps after my death it may be better known; at present it would not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions of persons or crimes.”-1st sentence of The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders spoken by the protagonist-narrator*A prison * A court of law

Narration (Example 2): “Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel; scrunched up in each fist he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage license (right), for he had decided to take his mistakes with him.”- 1st sentence of White Teeth

Critics Say That Novels Are More Morally Complex Than

Some Other Artforms?

Is This True? Why?

The Length of the Novel, the Protagonist and Moral Complexity: “A protagonist is usually interesting not because he is someone special, but because something happens to him. Because the novel has to be long and organized, he has to become interesting as he deals with the thing that happens to him. This typical transformation from an ordinary person to someone worth remembering comes to seem both routine and appealing, encouraging readers to see themselves as potentially interesting and their lives as potential material for novels. Thus are the moral lives of readers encouraged to develop complexity… Every important character in a novel is portrayed as having moral complexity.” -JS

Moral Complexity and Ontology:

“Every novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity. Every novel says to the reader: ‘Things are not as simple as you think.’” - Milan Kundera

“All novels, of every age, are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: What is the self? How can the self be grasped? It is one of those fundamental questions on which the novel, as novel, is based.” - Milan Kundera

Ontology:“A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything that he’s capable of. Novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that human possibility.”

- Milan Kundera

Are novels too complex?Can we still read them?

“Books require an immense amount of energy. It is not just pages. It is ideas, observations, many narrative lines...I have no faith in the survival of the novel. It is almost over. The world has changed and people do not have the time to give that a book requires.”

- V.S. NaipaulWinner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature

Are novels too complex?Can we still read them?

“If we citizens do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams” (xiv).

-Yann Martin, winner of the 2002 Mann Booker Prize

BibliographyAbbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Kundera, Milan. The Art of the Novel. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Martell, Yann. Life of Pi. New York: Harcourt Books, 2001.

Smiley, Jane. Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 2005.