Novel

I

Introduction

Novel, long work of written fiction. Most novels involve many characters and tell a complex story by placing the characters in a number of different situations.

Because novels are long—generally 200 pages or more—novelists can tell more richly detailed tales than can authors of briefer literary forms such as the short story. Many readers consider the novel the most flexible type of literature, and thus the one with the most possibilities. For example, writers can produce novels that have the tension of a drama, the scope of an epic poem, the type of commentary found in an essay, and the imagery and rhythm of a lyric poem. Over the centuries writers have continually experimented with the novel form, and it has constantly evolved in new directions.

The word novel came into use during the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century), when Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio applied the term novella to the short prose narratives in his Il decamerone (1353; Ten Day’s Work). When his tales were translated, the term novel passed into the English language. The word novella is now used in English to refer to short novels.

II

What Is a Novel?

Writers have pushed traditional literary boundaries so that the characteristics of many types of literature overlap, but looking at certain differences between novels and other literary forms can give readers a basic guide to the novel’s distinctive traits.

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Like the short story, the novel tells a story, but unlike the short story, it presents more than an episode. In a novel, the writer has the freedom to develop plot, characters, and theme slowly. The novelist can also surround the main plot with subplots that flesh out the tale. Unlike short stories, most novels have numerous shifts in time, place, and focus of interest.

Like epic poetry, the novel may celebrate grand designs or great events, but unlike epic poetry it also may pay attention to details of everyday life, such as people's daily tasks and social obligations. For example, the epic the Iliad by ancient Greek poet Homer depicts the Trojan War in grand terms but does not comment on the experience of the common soldiers. By contrast, in his novel Madame Bovary (1857), French writer Gustave Flaubert shows the main character shopping and worrying about household expenses.

Like a playwright, a novelist tells a story, but a novelist has more freedom than a playwright to portray events outside the framework of the immediate story, such as historical events that happen at the same time as the story. The playwright is more limited in this way because description in dramas is generally conveyed through dialogue between characters. In a play, rarely does a narrator speak directly to the audience, as the narrator of a novel can. Novelists can also make smoother changes in time and place than can playwrights, who must write their works so that they can be performed on stage.

Like the people in the Bible, the novel’s characters may search for God and have their own particular dreams and ideals, but unlike many biblical characters, the characters in novels are generally presented as people without spiritual missions and destinies. For example, in the Bible, the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah call on the Hebrew people to live more righteously. By contrast, although the character Levin in Anna Karenina (1875-1877) by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy is obsessed with the moral life, he is also a farmer, thinker, husband, and society man who must attend to the needs of everyday life.

Unlike writers of allegories or parables, novelists do not use characters solely as emblems. The biblical parable of the prodigal son, which tells of a man who forgives his son for the errors of his ways, explores ideas of Christian forgiveness but does not investigate the characters of the family members in great detail. By contrast, the works of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which also explore themes of forgiveness, demonstrate the anguish of guilt-ridden men and women. In Dostoyevsky’s Prestuplanie i nakazanie (1866; Crime and Punishment) a man commits a murder and escapes punishment from authorities. However, he still suffers because his own conscience is burdened by the knowledge of the wrong he has done.

Finally, the novel may adapt patterns of mythology, but the novelist does not simply retell the myth. Instead, the novelist structures the story around the underlying themes of the myth while featuring unique characters and settings. In Ulysses (1922) by Irish writer James Joyce, the experiences of the character Leopold Bloom have some similarity to those of the hero Odysseus in the Odyssey by ancient Greek poet Homer. But Bloom’s experiences take place entirely within his world—the Ireland of his time. Joyce thus uses the ancient material of Odysseus’s mythical experiences to create a new interpretation of contemporary experience.

III

Elements of the Novel

To create a fictional world that seems real to the reader, novelists use five main elements: plot, characters, conflict, setting, and theme.

The plot is the novel’s story and its underlying meaning. Therefore, when a reader describes the plot of a novel, the reader should describe both what happens to the characters and the meaning of these events. Plots can be anything the writer dreams up, from narratives so realistic that they seem like nonfiction to tales of the fantastic, such as science-fiction works that involve distant worlds.

To engage the reader, a novel must feature characters with complex and complete personalities. Characters do not need to be physically realistic; science-fiction novels often feature aliens as characters. But meaningful characters usually have hopes, fears, concerns, and ambitions that the reader can recognize. Well-conceived characters do not simply serve as devices to further the plot; they convince the reader that they have lives beyond the boundaries of the particular story being told.

The novelist makes the reader care about the story by introducing some sort of conflict. The conflict can be physical, emotional, or ethical, but it always creates some sort of tension that the characters must resolve.

Another element that the novelist uses to draw in the reader is the setting of the work—the time and place that the story occurs. For some novelists, setting is essential and plays a major role in the book’s theme, as in a novel that is about life in the American South. For other authors, the setting is not as important—for example, in a book that focuses on the inner thoughts of a single character.

The theme of a novel is the major idea that the novelist is setting forth in writing the book. The theme gives the novel greater depth than it would have if it were a simple recitation of a series of actions. An author uses the other elements of the novel to build the work’s theme. For example, to develop a theme about the current state of the American South, an author might set the book in the South, feature characters from the South, and have the characters speak in a Southern style. Through these elements, along with the plot, the novelist conveys the novel’s theme.

A

Plot

The plot of a novel is the narrative and thematic development of the story—that is, what happens and what these events mean. English novelist E. M. Forster, author of works such as A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910), referred to the plot as a “narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.” By this statement he meant that plot is a series of events that depend on one another, not a sequence of unrelated episodes.

There are several types of plots. An episodic plot features distinct episodes that are related to one another but that can also be read individually, almost as stories by themselves. Most novels involve more complex plots, in which the story builds on itself so that each episode evolves out of a previous one and produces another one. Some plots are based less on the physical action of events than on the emotional reactions of characters and their efforts to communicate their feelings to others. And some novelists experiment with plot, interrupting the main story with subplots, moving back and forth in time, or merging fact with fiction.

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