Novel

A novel is a long or extended work of fiction written in prose, usually in the form of a story. It is longer and more complex than a short story or novella, and it is not bound by the restrictions of plays and poetry.

The word "novel" is from the Italian word novella which means "new".

Qualities of the novel

Most novels have the following qualities, but in each case there are exceptions:

• Intended as entertainment (but The Education of Cyrus is didactic).
• The subject matter is wholly fictional (but Moby-Dick by Herman Melville has digressions into fact).
• The subject matter is realistic (but many have surreal or fantastic elements, from Satyricon onwards).
• The subject matter is human beings, their actions and relations (perhaps in disguise, for example as animals).
• There are a small number of central characters (but 253 by Geoff Ryman has many characters none of whom is central).
• A single plot links the events and characters.
• The main character or characters have evolved and grown by the end of the novel (according to Anthony Burgess, when discussing his dissatisfaction with the film adaption of A Clockwork Orange; but in The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker the timescale is too short for evolution or growth to occur).

History of the novel

In ancient Greece and Rome, these were earliest extant novels (some people would call them precursors of the novel):

• Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus (Greek, 4th century BC). A fictional account of the education of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. A strong candidate for the first novel.
• Petronius, Satyricon (Latin, 1st century).
• Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Latin, 2nd century).
• Chariton, The Loves of Chaereas and Callirhoe (Greek, 1st century–2nd century).
• Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon (Greek, 2nd century).
• Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (Greek, 2nd century).
• Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale (Greek, 2nd century–3rd century).
• Heliodorus, Ethiopian Tale (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
• Anon, Joseph and Aseneth (Greek, 1st century–5th century).
• Anon, The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre (Latin adaptation of lost Greek original, 5th century–6th century).

From the Orient, there were important early novels, such as:

• Dandin, The Adventures of the Ten Princes (Sanskrit, 6th century–7th century).
• Banabhatta, Kadambari (Sanskrit, 7th century).
• Anon, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Japanese, 10th century).
• Anon, The Tale of Ochikubo (Japanese, 10th century).
• Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (Japanese, 11th century).
• Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese, 14th century).

In the Renaissance, there was an important European trend towards fantastic fiction :

• Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (English, 1485).
• García de Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadis of Gaul (Spanish adaptation of lost 13th century original, 1508).
• Thomas More, Utopia (Latin, circa 1516).
• François Rabelais, Pantagruel, (French, 1532).

The picaresque novel and the famous Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) are generally considered to be the origin of the modern European novel, characterized by realism. For example:

• Anon, Lazarillo de Tormes (Spanish, 1554).
• Mateo Alemán, Guzmán de Alfarache (Spanish, 1599).
• Cervantes, Don Quixote (Spanish, 1605).
• Francisco de Quevedo, El buscón (Spanish, 1626), masterpiece of the picaresque subgenre.
• Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus (German, 1669), the most important of the non-Spanish picaresque novels.

In the 18th century the major authors were English:

• Alain-René Le Sage, Gil Blas (French, 1715).
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (English, 1719).
• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (English, 1726).
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (English, 1740).
• Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (English, 1749).

The 19th century was the great century of the novel. The major authors were French, English, Russian, and American:

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (English, 1813).
• Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir (French, 1830).
• Honoré de Balzac, Le père Goriot (French).
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (American, 1851).
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (French,1857).
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (English, 1860-1861).
• Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (French, 1862).
• Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Russian, 1865).
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (Russian, 1866).
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (American, 1885).
• Benito Pérez Galdós, Fortunata y Jacinta (Spanish, 1886-1887).

In the first decade of the 20th Century, modernism emerged:

• Marcel Proust À la recherche du temps perdu, (French, 1913-1927).
• James Joyce Ulysses (English, 1922).
• Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain (German, 1924).
• Franz KafkaThe Trial, (German, 1925).
• William Faulkner (English).

From 1960 to 1967, the Latin America novel boom took place:

• Mario Vargas Llosa, La ciudad y los perros (Spanish, 1963).
• Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad, (Spanish).

See also

Literature, the short story, theater, poetry, novella, first novel in English.

Novel is also the name of a commune of the Haute-Savoie département in France.