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A '''novel''' (from French ''nouvelle'' Italian "novella", "new") is an extended, generally [[fiction]]al [[narrative]], typically in [[prose]]. Until the [[eighteenth century]], the word referred specifically to [[short fiction]]s of [[love]] and intrigue as opposed to ''[[romance (genre)|romance]]s'', which were [[epic poetry|epic]]-length works about love and [[adventure]]. Literary theory of genres has not yet managed to isolate a "single definite, stable characteristic of the novel" that holds without reservations.<ref>Bakhtin 1981, pp.8-9</ref>

A '''novel''' (from French ''nouvelle'' Italian "novella", "new") is an extended, generally [[fiction]]al [[narrative]], typically in [[prose]]. Until the [[eighteenth century]], the word referred specifically to [[short fiction]]s of [[love]] and intrigue as opposed to ''[[romance (genre)|romance]]s'', which were [[epic poetry|epic]]-length works about love and [[adventure]]. Literary theory of genres has not yet managed to isolate a "single definite, stable characteristic of the novel" that holds without reservations.<ref>Bakhtin 1981, pp.8-9</ref>

===Early novel, 1000-1600===

===Early novel, 1000-1600===

It is difficult to give a full catalog of the genres that finally culminated - with the works of [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], [[Niccolò Machiavelli]] and [[Miguel de Cervantes]] - in the original "novel", the production today generally categorized under the term "novella".

It is difficult to give a full catalog of the genres that finally culminated - with the works of [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], [[Niccolò Machiavelli]] and [[Miguel de Cervantes]] - in the original "novel", the production today generally categorized under the term "novella".

===Conflict between novels and romances, 1600-1700===

===Conflict between novels and romances, 1600-1700===

The invention of printing subjected both novels and romances to a first wave of [[trivia]]lization and commercialization. Printed books were expensive, yet something people would buy, just as people still buy expensive things they can barely afford. Alphabetization, or the rise of [[literacy]], was a slow process when it came to writing skills, but was faster as far as reading skills were concerned. The [[Protestant Reformation]] created new readers of religious pamphlets, [[newspaper]]s and [[broadsheet]]s.

The invention of printing subjected both novels and romances to a first wave of [[trivia]]lization and commercialization. Printed books were expensive, yet something people would buy, just as people still buy expensive things they can barely afford. Alphabetization, or the rise of [[literacy]], was a slow process when it came to writing skills, but was faster as far as reading skills were concerned. The [[Protestant Reformation]] created new readers of religious pamphlets, [[newspaper]]s and [[broadsheet]]s.

The big market success of the next decade, Daniel Defoe's ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'', appeared that very year and [[William Taylor (Publisher)|William Taylor]], the publisher, avoided these traps with a title page claiming neither the realm of novels nor that of romances, but that of [[histories (history of the novel)|histories]], yet with a page design tasting all too much of the "new romance" with which Fénelon had just become famous.

The big market success of the next decade, Daniel Defoe's ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'', appeared that very year and [[William Taylor (Publisher)|William Taylor]], the publisher, avoided these traps with a title page claiming neither the realm of novels nor that of romances, but that of [[histories (history of the novel)|histories]], yet with a page design tasting all too much of the "new romance" with which Fénelon had just become famous.

Defoe's ''Robinson Crusoe'' was everything but a novel, as the term was understood at the time. It wasn't short, it didn't focus on an intrigue, and it wasn't told for the sake of a clear cut-point. Nor was Crusoe an [[anti-hero]] of a satirical romance, though he spoke in the first person singular and had stumbled into all kinds of miseries. He did not really invite laughter (though readers of taste would read, of course, all his proclamations about being a real man as made in good humour). The feigned author was serious: against his will his life had brought him into this series of most romantic adventures. He had fallen into the hands of [[piracy|pirates]] and survived years on an uninhabited island. He had survived all this — a mere sailor from [[York]] — with exemplary heroism. If readers read his work as a romance, full of sheer invention, he could not blame them. He and his publisher knew that all he had to tell was strictly unbelievable, and yet they would claim it was true (and if not, still readable as good [[allegory]]) — this is the complex game which puts this work into the fourth column of the pattern above.

Defoe's ''Robinson Crusoe'' was everything but a novel, as the term was understood at the time. It wasn't short, it didn't focus on an intrigue, and it wasn't told for the sake of a clear cut-point. Nor was Crusoe an [[anti-hero]] of a satirical romance, though he spoke in the first person singular and had stumbled into all kinds of miseries. He did not really invite laughter (though readers of taste would read, of course, all his proclamations about being a real man as made in good humour). The feigned author was serious: against his will his life had brought him into this series of most romantic adventures. He had fallen into the hands of [[piracy|pirates]] and survived years on an uninhabited island. He had survived all this — a mere sailor from [[York]] — with exemplary heroism. If readers read his work as a romance, full of sheer invention, he could not blame them. He and his publisher knew that all he had to tell was strictly unbelievable, and yet they would claim it was true (and if not, still readable as good [[allegory]]) — this is the complex game which puts this work into the fourth column of the pattern above.

===Reformation, 1700-1800===

===Reformation, 1700-1800===

The publication of ''Robinson Crusoe'' did not directly lead to the mid-18th century market reform. Crusoe's books were published as dubious histories; they played the game of the scandalous early eighteenth century market, with the novel fully integrated into the realm of histories. They even appeared reprinted by one of the London newspapers as a possibly true relation of facts. Philosophers like [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] turned ''Robinson Crusoe'' into a classic decades later, and it took another century before one could see Defoe's book as the first English "novel" — published, as [[Ian Watt]] saw it in 1957 — as an answer to the market of French romances.

The publication of ''Robinson Crusoe'' did not directly lead to the mid-18th century market reform. Crusoe's books were published as dubious histories; they played the game of the scandalous early eighteenth century market, with the novel fully integrated into the realm of histories. They even appeared reprinted by one of the London newspapers as a possibly true relation of facts. Philosophers like [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] turned ''Robinson Crusoe'' into a classic decades later, and it took another century before one could see Defoe's book as the first English "novel" — published, as [[Ian Watt]] saw it in 1957 — as an answer to the market of French romances.

===Novels as literature, 1740-1800===

===Novels as literature, 1740-1800===

The early eighteenth century market for classics of prose fiction inspired living authors. Aphra Behn, writing in relative anonymity, became a celebrated author posthumously. Fénelon achieved the same fame during his lifetime. Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker and [[Eliza Haywood]] followed their famous French models who had dared to claim fame with their real names: the [[Madame d'Aulnoy]] and [[Anne Marguerite Petit du Noyer]]. Most novels had previously been pseudonymous; now they became the productions of famous authors.

The early eighteenth century market for classics of prose fiction inspired living authors. Aphra Behn, writing in relative anonymity, became a celebrated author posthumously. Fénelon achieved the same fame during his lifetime. Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker and [[Eliza Haywood]] followed their famous French models who had dared to claim fame with their real names: the [[Madame d'Aulnoy]] and [[Anne Marguerite Petit du Noyer]]. Most novels had previously been pseudonymous; now they became the productions of famous authors.

[[Category: General Reference]]

[[Category: General Reference]]