Novel

B

16th and 17th Centuries

The novel developed in its modern form in Europe in the late 1500s and early 1600s, during the flowering of the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century), a time of renewed interest in learning and culture. The subject matter of the early novels reflected the concerns of society in general, including the emergence of the middle class as a social group, the questioning of traditional religious and moral values, curiosity about science and philosophy, and an appetite for exploration and discovery.

The earliest novels, called picaresque novels, were stories of adventure featuring roguish main characters, or picaros, who traveled widely, depended on their wits for survival, and took advantage of those less clever than themselves. In contrast to the poetic romances of chivalry, which told of the pursuit of high spiritual ideals, picaresque novels celebrated adventure for its own sake. They also were episodic, meaning that the story was told in a series of episodes that did not depend on one another to make sense.

A major picaresque novel was Lazarillo de Tormes (1554; Lazaro of Tormes), a rambling, anonymously written Spanish work that traces the misadventures of a boy making his way in a world of savage peasants, corrupt clergy, conniving nobles, and an array of rough characters. Through his experiences Lazaro learns the art of survival, including how to eat bread without being noticed—he takes mouselike bites from the loaf. In England, an early picaresque was The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594) by Thomas Nashe. A racy treatment of 16th-century Italy, it features sinister clerics, beautiful endangered women, and appearances by German theologian Martin Luther and Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus.

Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615) by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes is a more serious work. It depicts an idealistic Spanish nobleman who imagines himself a hero but is actually an undistinguished, middle-aged man who has read so many romances of chivalry that he has lost touch with reality. Featuring remote castles, strange inns, and motley company, the work dramatizes the collision between idealism and realism. With his work, Cervantes introduced the idea that the novel should penetrate surface appearances. For example, when Don Quixote encounters a barber wearing a brass basin on his head to shield himself from the rain, Don Quixote thinks that the basin is a magical golden helmet. His mistake represents the idea that things are not always as they appear. Despite Don Quixote’s foolish misinterpretations, the work is not cynical and deflating, but instead celebrates the freedom that dreaming and idealizing can provide to people.

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The novel made few major advances in the 1600s. During that century public interest in the drama was strong, and English masters such as John Milton and John Dryden wrote outstanding narrative poetry. Many people considered the new form of the novel cheap and vulgar compared with drama and poetry. It also seemed to require less skill to create than verse did, and its subject matter was rarely as refined as that of the other literary forms. One exception was La princesse de Clèves (1678; The Princess of Clèves), an elegant work by French writer Marie de La Fayette about a married noblewoman who falls in love with another man. She keeps her feelings secret and does not remarry, even after her husband’s death. The courtly setting of the book placed it apart from the picaresque adventure tales. The book also treats the emotional states of its characters in much more depth than the picaresque novels do.

C

18th Century

In the 18th century, five authors—Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne—wrote the first major novels in English. Writers from France and Germany produced the first important novels in continental Europe.

C

1

Britain

The first major British novelist was Daniel Defoe, a journalist by trade. He satisfied the public taste for exotic foreign countries and characters in Robinson Crusoe (1719) and looked at city life in Moll Flanders (1722). Robinson Crusoe concerns a shipwrecked sailor who must survive on a remote island. Defoe based his plot on the adventures of a seaman, Alexander Selkirk, who had been marooned on one of the Juan Fernández Islands off the coast of Chile. Moll Flanders is narrated by a London prostitute who steals from her clients, preys on children when times are bad, goes to bed, unwittingly, with her own brother—and all the while keeps a cheerful attitude.

Samuel Richardson, like French writer Marie de La Fayette, paid attention to the psychology of his characters at a time when few writers did. For example, Defoe created captivating narratives, but his work tells readers little about the inner thoughts of his characters. By contrast, in the lengthy novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-1748), Richardson addresses inner torment, manipulation in romance, and passion turned to cruelty. Thousands of pages in these two novels are spent on conveying nuances of feeling.

Richardson’s Pamela provoked a reaction in Henry Fielding, a London judge who wrote drama before turning to prose. Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) parodies Pamela, whose main character proves her virtue by writing letter after letter about chastity. Fielding writes about a virtuous man, but the main character proves his resolve by surviving on the road after losing his job. Fielding’s masterpiece is Tom Jones (1749), a story in the picaresque tradition. The novel is about a young man’s adventures as he tries to gain his rightful inheritance. It features precise phrasing, well-drawn characters, and the careful unwinding of mysteries.

The works of Tobias Smollett, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), provide a broad vision of English social life, from pretentious provincials to hard-bitten sailors to semiliterate servant girls. Smollett’s stories are strongest when they satirize social climbers and describe the faults of the English middle and upper classes.

Laurence Sterne, a country clergyman and intellectual, brought together the concerns of other writers of his time. Like Richardson, Sterne was obsessed with the differences between individuals, but like Fielding and Smollett, he was comic and lusty in his subject matter. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) opened up a new front for the novel: experimentation with structure and language. The novel is filled with asides, wild scholarly digressions, comic scenes, blank pages (to be filled in by the reader), and other experimental features, including a black page to express grief for a departed character.

The development of the Gothic novel was another important literary trend in England in the 1700s. In Gothic novels, authors created the element of horror by using ghosts, chains, dungeons, tombs, and nature in its more terrifying aspects. The first Gothic novel was The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. Later examples include The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe, Ambrosio, or The Monk (1796) by Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

C

2

France and Germany

In continental Europe, writers also moved into richer veins as the popularity of the picaresque novel waned. Gil Blas (1715-1735) by French writer Alain René Lesage was one of the last picaresque novels. French writer Pierre Marivaux then produced La vie de Marianne (1731-1741; The Life of Marianne), about a girl left alone in Paris. Marivaux’s character is more ordinary and realistic than the characters of the romance, but more complicated and sympathetic than the rogues featured in picaresque novels.

Candide (1759), by French author Voltaire, satirizes the philosophical school of Optimism founded by 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, which states that the world we inhabit is “the best of all possible worlds.” Voltaire believed that Optimism led people to accept their situations instead of changing them. Candide follows the checkered fortunes of an innocent young man as he travels the world and gradually comes to mistrust the philosophy that “all is for the best” and that people should not try to improve their lot.

Another major French novel was Le neveu de Rameau (written 1761-1774, published 1805; Rameau's Nephew) by French writer Denis Diderot. It takes the form of a philosophical dialogue between “I” (the narrator) and “He” (the nephew of French composer Jean Philippe Rameau). Les liaisons dangereuses (1782; Dangerous Liaisons) by French writer Pierre Choderlos de Laclos is grounded much more in everyday life. In the novel, the Marquise de Merteuil challenges her friend the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce a naive young woman. Valmont agrees, but he also sets out to seduce another woman, who is married. Laclos’s depiction of society intrigue represents the power plays of political life.

In Germany, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther), which explores the inner life of a tormented young man who, disappointed in love, kills himself. Werther’s suicide became an international event in literary culture, and hundreds of young men are said to have followed his example, leaving themes of melancholy and self-destruction for later novelists to consider.

D

19th Century

For the novel, the 19th century was a time of innovation in form and exploration of new subject matter. In Europe, the major authors of the period were French, English, and Russian. Many North American authors of the 19th century were preoccupied with creating a national literature distinct from European influences. A few novelists were writing in Latin America and in Asia, but those areas and Africa did not truly embrace the novel form until the 20th century.

In Europe, two major classes of novels developed: novels of manners and chronicle novels. Works such as Emma (1816) by English writer Jane Austen, Madame Bovary (1857) by French writer Gustave Flaubert, and The Mill on the Floss (1860) by English writer George Eliot are novels of manners. These complex observations of individuals and society, set in the provincial countryside, focus in great detail on the lives of a few individuals.

The era’s chronicle novels had a larger scope, making the novel an all-purpose literary and cultural experience: a source of historical information, a study of manners and morals, a course in contemporary political and ethical ideas, and an investigation of wealth and poverty, respectability and crime. Examples of this type of novel include Waverley (1814) by English writer Sir Walter Scott, Le rouge et le noir (1830; The Red and the Black) by French author Stendhal, the multivolume series La comédie humaine (1842-1848; The Human Comedy) by French writer Honoré de Balzac, Vanity Fair (1847-1848) by English writer William Makepeace Thackeray, Our Mutual Friend (1865) by English writer Charles Dickens, and Voina i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace) by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

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