The form of novel and its Kind

Name: Dipti Vaghela

            (diptivaghela50@gmail.com)

Roll no: 07

Enrolment no: PG14101030 

Topic: The form of novel and its Kind

Paper no: 5

Name of the paper: The Romantic Literature

Dedicated to: English Department M.K.B.University

◊ Preface

          We get pleasure and moral from literature. ‘Literature is the mirror of society’. It reflect the picture of real life and from the reading of that literature we understand that how to live life? And as we know that there are different type of literature like drama, lyric, ballad, ode, novel, etc. Novel is a long narrative form of prose. It is also an interesting form of literature. It describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.  It deals imaginatively with human experience, and events involving a group of persons in a specific setting. So let’s know more things about it.

◊ Origin of the Novel

          The term ‘novel’ means Novellus in Latin abbreviation of noun, new in Italian ‘novella’, new things. It was first used for such tales as those of Boccaccio (1313-75) in his Decameron.  In England the novel came to be established in the eighteenth century with the publication of the Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740). It is written in the epistolary form. The exotic and the adventurous continued to be popular in the novel side by side with the development of realism.  The novel had reached its fullest development as an art form in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Novelists like Flaubert, Henry James, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Foster and Thomas Mann. In their concern for their craft they have made use of various devices to achieve new aesthetic form. Thomas Nash wrote the first English novel is The Unfortunate Traveller, The life of Jack Wilton.

          Meaning of the word novel as under,

          The novel does not simply convey life but it says something about life. It reveals some kind of pattern in life and also it brings significance. It is craft of contriving through the written words. It is representation of human life it instructs or diverts or both.

          There are types of poem like lyric, ode, epic, etc. Types of drama like tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, etc. As same the form of novel also has its own types so let’s understand its one by one.

◊ Types of Novel

          Let’s understand it in detail,

₀ Epistolary Novel: Epistolary novel written in the form of letters. These were popular in the English and French. Epistolary word derived from the word of epistle. It created by combined letters. So we can say that story moves through letters. It means the letters become the medium of narrate. There are some examples of this type. Like Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa Harlow. There is some example of Gujarati novel like Morpicha written by Vinod Joshi.

₀ Gothic Novel: It was the style of architecture common in Western Europe during the 12^th and 16^th centuries. It is a type of romance or fiction which was popular in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries. It was inaugurated by Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto in 1764 a gothic story.  It was written in imitation of medieval Romances. The setting of these novels was in mediaeval. And often the use of gloomy castle full of dangerous and underground passage, dark battlements and hidden panels. Also they had plots involving ghosts, madness, outrage, super station and revenge. It showed the way to the exploitation of terror by greater story. Some other examples of this type like The Mysteries of Udolpho and the Italian by Ann Radcliffe in 1794 and 1797. Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk in 1796. It had more horrific elements into the English gothic, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, etc.

₀ The Picaresque Novel: The word ‘Picaresque’ has been derived from the Spanish word ‘Picaro’ which means rogue, thief, and knave. It is the tale of the adventures or misadventures of a picaro or rogue who wanders from one country to another. And in this way the novelist gets an introducing variety of characters and incidents.

          It was applied to any long story in which a number of separate events, sometime comic, violent, or joined together. In play has traditionally been called main character as hero; but in a picaresque story this word is not altogether suitable because the hero is generally a rogue.  Lately the phrase ánti hero’ has come in use. In this novel picture may be satiric but the aim of the novelist is to delight and entertain and not to reform or improve. It is like the movie ‘Rascals’. Thus this novel is the tale of a hard worked travelling hero, suffering every vicissitude good or bad and enduring them all. Examples of some writers who wrote in picaresque tradition like life of Jack Wilton by Thomas Nash. It is the first picaresque novel. It relates the adventures of Jack Wilton, who travels through France, Germany, Flanders and Italy. Richard Hood’s The English Rogue is also in the Picaresque tradition. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe but it cannot be called a picaresque novel. Smollett wrote Roderick Random in the form of picaresque novel, Tom Jones also in the form of picaresque by Fielding. It is the story of illegitimate child with no parents to look after him.

₀ The Panoramic Novel: This kind of novel presents contemporary life, dress, society, habits and manners. In this kind of novel, the novelist ranges over a wide ground and provides a comprehensive picture of that time. It present a good length which weaves many events and make a whole picture of life as same as the epic and it is as long as the epic. That’s why it is also called Epical novel. This kind of novel has an immense variety of characters incidents. It means this type of novels emerges the back ground of that society. Henry fielding is the father of the English novel and founder/creator of the panoramic or epical novel. Thackeray wrote Vanity Fair is also epical novel and as the Fielding’s Tom Jones make a comprehensive. Richardson’s Clarissa has more than a million words. It is four times as long as David Copperfield and at least twice as long as War and Peace.

₀ The Historical Novel:  Another kind of the novel is the historical novel. It presents a good combination of bad history and bad fiction because it departs from fiction and deviates from facts. A perfect historical novel is not possible but good historical novels there are in plenty. If history and fiction are correctly understood and made use of, it is possible to write a good historical novel.

          The historical novelist takes certain events and characters from history and weaves around them a fictitious enchantment. He described the spirit and atmosphere of history as same in the serials like Jodha Akbar, MaharanaPratap,Mahabharata. Etc. He reconstructs imaginatively the life of the past. He creates his arts with the support of history. It is not the story of fact incidents but story of imagination related with history. And that we called a historical novel. It makes the historical events and issues crucial for the central characters and for the course of narrative. Some of the greatest historical novels also use the protagonists and actions to reveal what the author regards as the deep forces that impel the historical process. Sir Walter Scott is the creator of the historical novel. He mixed into a unity fact, fancy, history and romance. He fact of history and changes the sequence of events in the interest of his art. His work Ivanhoe (1819) is the historical novel. Dickens A tale of two Cities (1859), George Eliot’s Romola (1863), Bulwer Lytton’s novels such as Rienzi and The Last Days of Pompeii, historical fiction attains maturity. Thackeray wrote ‘Henry Esmond’ takes the historical novel a stage further. W.H. Ainsworth wrote some forty historical novels of which the best known are Road wood, Jack Shephard, The tower of London, Old St Paul’s and The Lancashire Witches. Charles Reade is another great historical novelist. His masterpiece, The Cloister and The Hearth is a historical romance. Charles Kingsley is also great historical novelist of the Victorian era. His most important work is Westward Ho, published in 1855. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the wind in 1936, in Georgia during the Civil war Reconstruction. So this is the historical novel and now we know in detail about the Regional novel.

ᴼ The Regional Novel: The regional novel is the novel which depicts the physical feature, life, customs, manners, history, etc, of some particular region or locality. As same in some serials like ‘BalikaVadhu’ Rajasthan is the region in this serial. It reflects the culture of that particular place. In this kind of novel a novelist emphasize the unique fetchers of one particular locality like the other kind. Regional novel is also artistic and creative type of novel. A novelist selects a region that becomes a symbol of the world at large which reflects the great world beyond. It emphasizes the setting, speech and social structure and customs of a particular locality. And writer not describe merely as local color but temperament of the characters and their ways of thinking, feeling, and interacting. There are some great writers who wrote regional novels such as Maria Edgewarth is the first of the great regional novelist of England. Her work Castle Rackrent. Bronte Sisters are greatest among the regional novelists of England. They wrote some novels like Wuthering Heights, The Professor and Villette. The early novels of George Eliot, Adam Bede, Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner are realistic and concrete in the presentation of the life of the ordinary people. Thomas Hardy is the most important regional novelist of England and deserves more space and attention. He is well known for his Wessex novel. Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was essentially a realist and a regionalist and his realism is well brought out in the vivid and real picture of the pottery districts of England or in his study of the Five Towns, The old Wive’s Tale, Clayhanger, Imperial Palace are among his better known novels.

ᴼ The Psychological Novel:  First is that Psychology means something which is related with mind or human .The word Psychological suggests that we naturally find about human behavior in this kind of novel. This kind of novelists analyze the motives, impulses and mental process which move his characters to act in one particular way. He describes human conflict of inner world wonderfully. He opens character internal personality to the reader and the novel acquires a broad intellectual tone. It means a fiction related with human behavior or mind that is the Psychological novel. There are some writers who wrote this kind of novels like Samuel Richardson, George Eliot and George Meredith. They are early novelists to be mentioned in this connection. So now let’s know other kind The stream of Consciousness novel. So let’s know it in detail.

ᴼ The stream of consciousness novels: If we coming to modern times we find a new kind of novel, “The stream of consciousness novel’. It carries the probing in to the soul a step ahead of analysis of mentality motives, passion, etc. It is a reflection of human emotions, feelings and all kinds of sentiments. This kind of novel is good which evokes or opens the characters’ soul and shows us what is happening. The action of the character is arranged in order to the harmony of soul. There are writers like Henry James, James Joyce, Virginia Woof, etc, have practiced this form of the novel with great success. So after the understanding of these kind novels also some minor kind of novels. As under,

          There are other kinds like proletarian novel. This kind of fiction flourished especially during the great economic depression of the 1930s. An English example is Walter Green wood’s Love on the dole (1931). Proletarian means related with political actions. Some realistic novels like George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Use of vents and personages from the historical past to add interest. Vladimir Nabokov was a supreme technician who wrote involuted novels. The second half of the twentieth century era of what is sometimes called the antinovel. It is the work which is deliberately constructed in a negative fashion, relying for its effects on the deletion of standard elements, on violating tradition norms. Bildungsroman and Erziehungsroman are German terms signifying “novel of formation” or “novel of education”. The subject of this   novel is the development of protagonist’s mind and character, in the passage from childhood through varied experiences. It shows one’s identity and role in the world. The mode began in Germany with K.P. moritz’s Anton Reiser. Then realistic novel is also one kind which describes as the fictional attempt to give the effect of realism. It is representing complex characters with mixed motives that are rooted in such eighteenth century writers as Defoe and Fielding and achieved a high development in the master novelists of the nineteenth century. Some other writers also joint them like Jane Austen, George Eliot, Anthony Trollop, William Dean Howells and Henry James in England and America. So these are some other kinds of novel. 

ᴼ Conclusion:

          Thus we can say that novel is the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella, short story and flash fiction. So we also called its like epic in length. Now a days we can say that how popular the form of novel? There are so many novelists in the current time like Chetan Bhagat, etc. There are some greatest novels in the language of Gujarati like MalelaJiv, Valamna, ManaviniBhavai, Samudrantike, Jay Somnath, etc. There are some movies in this current time based on some novels such as Two States from the novel two states, Three Ediots based on the novel Five point  someone, Hello on the novel ‘ One night at the call center. These novels written by Chetan Bhagat. So these are the information about the form novel.

ᴼ Reference Books

1)   Literary forms trends and movements by Dr. RaghukulTilak

2)   English Literature by R.J. Rees

3)   A Dictionary of Literary Terms by A.N. Gupta and Satish Gupta

4)   An Introduction to the English Novel 1 by Arnold Kettle

5)   A Glossary of Literary Terms by M.H. Abrahams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham.