Novel

E

7

Romance Novel

Romance novels are stories of love. One of the first great romances was Jane Eyre (1847) by English novelist Charlotte Brontë, about a young orphan girl who gains a job as a governess and finds love with her employer. Rebecca (1938), by British writer Daphne du Maurier, tells of a young woman who marries a widower and becomes preoccupied with what kind of woman the man’s first wife was.

A classic romance is Love Story (1970) by Erich Segal, about a man from a wealthy family who marries a poor girl who dies young. A well-known passage from the novel describes one of their conversations:

“Stop!” She cut off my apology, then said very quietly, “Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry.”

Other famous romance novelists are Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel, and Jacqueline Susann.

E

8

Historical Novel

The historical novel places its characters in a past time. The novelist attempts to portray that era realistically in both fact and spirit.

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The first major historical novel was Waverley (1814) by Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott. This novel and its many sequels revolve around historical events in Scotland, England, and many other regions of the world. French novelist Alexandre Dumas wrote two major historical novels. Le comte de Monte-Cristo (1844; The Count of Monte Cristo) concerns a man unjustly imprisoned. Les trios mousquetaires (1844; The Three Musketeers) is about three swashbuckling adventurers during the reign of 17th-century French king Louis XIII.

One of the most popular novels ever in the United States is a historical novel. Gone With the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell is set during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Reconstruction period directly after the war. It tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara, a Southern belle who lives on her family’s plantation, Tara. Much of the novel concerns Scarlett’s infatuation with her neighbor Ashley Wilkes and the pursuit of Scarlett by a charming and dashing man named Rhett Butler.

Historical North America has been the subject of many other historical novels. In Northwest Passage (1937), American novelist Kenneth Roberts examines the life of 18th-century American frontiersman Robert Rogers. Rogers was one of the seekers of the elusive Northwest Passage, a water passage around the north coast of North America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. World Enough and Time (1947) by American writer Robert Penn Warren revolves around political maneuverings in Kentucky in the early 1800s.

One of the most popular writers of historical novels of the late 20th century was Patrick O’Brian, who was born in England and later moved to Ireland. O’Brian wrote 20 books about Jack Aubrey, a British naval officer, and Stephen Maturin, an Italian Catalan doctor and spy. O’Brian’s novels are set during the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), when French leader Napoleon I waged war on much of the rest of Europe. O’Brian published his first Aubrey-Maturin novel, Master and Commander, in 1969. The final installment of the series, Blue at the Mizzen, appeared in 1999, shortly before O’Brian’s death.

F

Experimental Novel

An experimental novel can be defined as a work in which the author places great importance on innovations in style and technique. Experimental novels can be challenging to read because they represent reality in unusual ways, but they also demonstrate one of the novel’s greatest strengths—its ability to encompass an almost endless variety of approaches. Czech writer Milan Kundera asserted this idea when he argued that the novel is a constant questioning of forms.

One of the earliest examples of the novel of experimentation is Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) by English writer Laurence Sterne. The novel requires the reader to wait with the author until he finishes digressions, figuring out jokes and enjoying twists such as odd turns of phrase, puns, and blank pages. Twentieth-century Argentine writer Julio Cortázar termed a reader who must follow the author’s whims in this way an accomplice reader, because reading becomes a more involved activity. Cortázar allowed readers to become accomplice readers in his Rayuela (1963; Hopscotch, 1966), the structure of which permits readers to jump around from chapter to chapter.

During the 19th century the prevailing trend in the novel was realism, but some experimental efforts appeared. One example is Zapiski iz podpol’ia (1864; Notes from Underground) by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky plunges the reader into the narrator’s complex mindset. The term underground refers to the narrator’s inner psychology, which dominates the novel and allows the reader little objective perspective. This immersion of the reader in an individual’s thoughts was not a common literary approach at the time.

In À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927; Remembrance of Things Past, 1922-1931), French writer Marcel Proust explored the individual mind by attaching great importance to what he called “the little moment” of sharp, poignant sensory recall. These moments are triggered by the most ordinary everyday events—the uneven footing of a curbstone or, in the novel's most famous such moment, the taste of a madeleine (little cake) when dipped in tea, a taste that evokes for the narrator his childhood in the town of Combray.

Ulysses (1922) by Irish writer James Joyce is basically a projection of impressions, perceptions, and knowledge. Drawing attention to his chapters by changing the literary style he uses, Joyce constantly forces the reader to readjust to parody, stream of consciousness, dialogue in play form, mixing of objective fact and dream, journalese, and political bombast. The monologue of Molly Bloom at the end of the novel is the most famous example of how Joyce portrays the mind processing reality. In the monologue Molly moves quickly through a train of associations:

Even as he used stream of consciousness, Joyce did establish plots. Other writers abandon story line altogether. L’innomable (completed 1950; published 1953; The Unnamable, 1958) by Irish-born writer Samuel Beckett is a pure monologue detached from linked events. A voice tells versions of its situation in an indefinable environment, lost in a vast space, being forced to speak in order to exist, and being haunted by vague presences. The novel is an exploration of “the unintelligible terms of an incomprehensible damnation,” and the prose registers the voice’s confusion: “Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on.”

Other experimentalists retain some of the conventions of storytelling and are less inclined to move toward the outer frontiers of language and consciousness. In The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), American writer Thomas Pynchon uses a complex plot and the trappings of social satire while at the same time achieving originality of form. The novel pokes fun at popular culture but on a deeper level explores the mentality of those convinced that broad conspiracies underlie much of what happens. The main character, Oedipa Maas, becomes a detective trying to uncover a network of subversives who are running a private postal service.

Crónica de una muerte anunciada (1981; Chronicle of a Death Foretold, 1983) by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez is also unified by the idea of a conspiracy, in this case a whole town’s casual attitude toward the impending murder of one of its inhabitants. The novel is experimental in that it is not a tale of identifying the killers—they have openly announced their intentions—but is instead a description of how and why the bystanders and participants handle their parts in the crime. The narrator, a reflective investigator who tries to re-create the crime through first-hand recollection and research, becomes a reporter of the townspeople’s indifference, resignation, callousness, and confusion.

La traición de Rita Hayworth (1968; Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, 1971) by Argentine writer Manuel Puig is another imaginative extension of the novel form. Part satire of 1940s movies and their audiences, part study of middle-class consciousness, the novel treats the theme of betrayal humorously. The structural core is a series of interior monologues. Film-crazed characters reveal their illusions and tastes, ideas of glamour, and views of love, seduction, and marriage. In one section the monologue is a one-sided conversation based on the observations of Choli, a woman in the cosmetics business who treats her friend Mita to comments on everything from eye shadow and men's silk dressing gowns to moral values. The reader serves as an accomplice in composing questions, or responses, omitted by the author. For example, in a remark that reveals both Choli’s sensibility and the novel’s focus on illusions, Puig gives an answer to an unasked question:

Novels can employ archaic language and conventions, alternate histories, or modern technology to create new visions. A famous literary experiment is The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) by American writer John Barth, in which Barth creates his own version of an 18th-century novel, complete with an imaginary diary by English colonizer John Smith. The main character, poet Ebenezer Cooke, “had found the sound of mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over.” Barth himself uses the style of the 1600s and 1700s to fashion an extended joke about the novel form itself and its preposterous plots, intrigues, and casts of eccentrics.

In Ragtime (1975) American author E. L. Doctorow mixes history and fiction to create events that never happened. For example, in the novel Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, two famous real-life psychoanalysts, take a trip through the Tunnel of Love ride at the Coney Island amusement park.

One of the best-known experimental novelists is American writer William S. Burroughs. His best-known book is Naked Lunch (1959), a loosely structured novel that depicts the experiences of a man trying to escape drug addiction. In the late 1960s Burroughs began experimenting with the technique of “cut-out and fold-in,” deliberately cutting apart and recombining the sentences of his manuscript in order to achieve new images and freedom from the boundaries of conventional storytelling techniques.

Technically, there is no end to the devices that novelists use to direct attention to their styles and structures. And there is virtually no end to the types of novels that writers create as they alter form, setting, and purpose to produce new and imaginative works that engage audiences.

VI

History of the Novel

The earliest examples of long writings in prose appeared in Europe and Asia in ancient and medieval times, but the novel took its modern form beginning in the 1500s, primarily in Europe. Today authors from all parts of the world write novels. This section traces the historical development of the novel.

A

Early Narrative Forms

Fictional stories were composed throughout the ancient world, and many of these have been referred to as novels. From ancient Rome the chief examples of these works are The Golden Ass (2nd century ad) by Lucius Apuleius, in which Lucius describes his adventures after magic ointment turns him into an ass, and the Satyricon (1st century ad) by Petronius Arbiter, which portrays wild parties and other excesses of life in Rome in the 1st century ad.

In Greece in the early centuries of the Christian era (beginning in the 1st century ad, after the birth of Jesus Christ), several books appeared that can be considered novels. The best known include the romances Daphnis and Chloë (2nd century ad?), which is generally attributed to Longus, and Æthiopica (3rd century ad), by Heliodorus of Emesa.

With the fall of Rome in the 5th century, Europe moved into the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century). During this time the epic was a popular form, and it can be seen as a precursor to the modern novel. Usually told or written in verse, epics generally involve the adventures of a single character, usually a heroic one. Details of everyday life do appear, but only as background to a greater, grander story. The list of well-known epics is long and includes the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf (8th century), the Spanish El cantar de mío Cid (1140; The Song of the Cid), and the German Nibelungenlied (13th century; Song of the Nibelungs).

The romance also developed in the Middle Ages. Romances were lengthy works told in verse or prose. They centered on issues of courtly love, featuring knights, ladies of the court, and chivalry. At first, romances were told and sung by French poet-musicians called troubadours and trouvères. Subsequently, romances were written by nobles, clerics, court musicians, and scribes. One popular romance was Le morte d’Arthur (1469-1470; The Death of Arthur) by English writer Sir Thomas Malory. The work tells the story of King Arthur, a legendary king of the Britons in ancient times; his wife, Queen Guinevere; her lover, the knight Lancelot; and many of the other characters of Arthurian legend.

In India, epics such as the Mahabharata (The Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty, 400 bc-ad 400) and the Ramayana (Way of Rama, 3rd century bc) were originally handed down from generation to generation by spoken word. People would learn and memorize them by hearing older people recite them. Later, the epics were written down. Another Indian precursor to the novel was the Dashakumaracharita (The Adventures of the Ten Princes), a prose romance by Dandin, a Sanskrit writer of the late 6th century ad.

Many scholars believe that the first true novel was The Tale of Genji (11th century ad) by Japanese author Murasaki Shikibu. A portrait of court life in Japan, it focuses on the fictional Prince Genji, his love affairs, and his descendants. Despite these early Asian examples, however, the novel failed to develop a sustained strength in Asia until the 20th century. Up to that time, poetry was the most popular literary form in that area of the world.

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