Reading
Novel.
A.
The
Definition of Novel
A novel is a fictional piece of prose
usually written in a narrative style. Novels tell stories, which are typically
defined as a series of events described in a sequence. The novel has been a
part of human culture for over a thousand years, although its origins are
somewhat debated. Regardless of how it began, the novel has risen to prominence
and remained one of the most popular and treasured examples of human culture
and writing. (by Jessica Ellis, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-novel.htm)
As a prose, novel can be defined as a
fiction of a certain extent as over 50,000 words. (by Abel Chevalley,
Novel is also fictitious tale or narrative, professing to be
conformed to real life; esp., one intended to exhibit the operation of the
passions, and particularly of love.
Maeve Maddox
said that the novel, a long fictional narrative that can
be from 60,000-100,000 words. For some authors 100,000 words are not enough. (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-novel-is-fiction/)
At
last, novel is also a form
of prose that has a range of 2,000-10,000 words. Unlike shortstory
that deals with major events, it deals with the elaborate sense
of a literary work containing both major and minor events that could be found
in any literary work. (http://www.enotes.com/virgins-make/q-and-a/what-difference-between-short-story-novel-thank-3675)
B.
KINDS OF NOVEL
1. Allegory
The surface story,
while a good read in itself, is but a means to an end of a deeper meaning. This
is common in religious stories because earthly concerns are a distorted
reflection of heavenly concerns. Much concerns the trials of journeying.
Example: Pilgrim's Progress
(1678) by John Bunyan.
2. Characters
These are the actors who form, who must
do something or something else, and relate to the others. It is through characters
that a novel moves on. Characters may be given different levels of credibility,
perhaps the lowest in comic novels
and the most in in depth psychological
moves.
3. Comic
novels
These are about people caught in
situations which draw out their own absurdities. The situation may be absurd or
the people themselves. Comic novels can be cruel, and also have an overall
pessimistic view of life. The world is exposed as bizarre and irrationality is
emphasized. People are self-obsessed, or follow drives that seem beyond
rational control. The worlds portrayed lack depth.
Example:
Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray.
4. Education
A character engages with a series of
predicaments and learns something about him or herself. The character may start
as challenging the system, and may come to conform, or the passage is the other
way around. The character may start young, and through growing up progress is
followed. Life can be presented as very complex through which the growing and
self-educating process takes place.
5. Epistolary
These are in the form
of letters or emails to and from people. If this is all it is, it can be a
rather restrictive format, and to get the full sense of place the letters or
emails would have to be long, contrived and somewhat unconvincing. There is psychological
potential. Older times when middle class people wrote letters to each other in
good English might make better novels, although letters took a while to arrive.
Another alternative to this is novel in the form of diaries.
Example: Pamela (1740) and Clarissa
(1748) by Samuel Richardson.
6. Feminist
Boundaries are
challenged in the ordered male world. The categorizing of male and female as
binary opposites is undermined, particularly the subordinate female.
Alternatively women's consciousness is highlighted within the male dominated
world, often a subculture within it, or men too challenge the given power
structures that invade everything from decision making to relationships.
Example: A Room of One's Own
(1931) by Virginia Woolf
7. Gothic
This utopian
related form of novel is often set in the past and perhaps in some far away
land of the trees, like Transylvania! The place of dilemma is not the location
but in the mind, however. The point about the fantastical world is not to seek
perfection but to show the fallacy of seeking perfection (e.g. everlasting
life) or the evil involved in seeking it immorally. These often use Christian
iconography to actually support the general Christian viewpoint from the
viewpoint of the other side.
8. Ironic
It is the difference
between how things seem and how they really exist. Often this is the expression
of views to those intended or otherwise existing, and through expressing them
creates the real meaning or situation desired. It is usually done through creating
absurd or unbelievable narration.
However, irony can be located in the difference between characters'
perspectives (situational) showing that one view is far from the truth or
indeed between their limited perspective and the reader's greater awareness
looking down upon everything (dramatic). Satire
is part of irony, as is the comic novel.
Example: Gulliver's Travels
(1726) by Jonathan Swift.
9. Magic
realism
Events usually are
bizarre and even supernatural or mythical. Rationality is undermined for the
purpose or examining what may be more real than the rational. The Western
tradition is parodied as a counter to its cultural imperialism and therefore
local third world ways of thinking are presented. There is alternatively a
Western (once Eastern European) critique of authority and power, making events
produced bizarre. Alternatively other methods challenge the ordered world
though distorting the plot, or the narration is made strange, or the mind has a
high place alongside geographical locations, or the novel discusses fiction
itself 9or a combination of these).
Example: Midnight's Children
(1981) by Salman Rushdie.
10. Narrative
structure
There needs to be a scene set for
action to take place within. The action has to be coherent, so that one thing
leads to another. The characters
carry out the action, and they need introducing, and they need to interrelate.
The narrative is that underlying structure which runs the story, arranging the
elements, driving the reader through the book. Time is dealt with, usually
compressed and unevenly, and the predicament gives the plot. The plot is the
narrative manifested in the prediction thrown up and resolved. The narrative
varies in intensity and level of dominance, usually becoming the most imposing
towards the end as the story comes towards its closure.
11. Narration
This can take place from different
points of view. The most neutral, most hidden approach, is the third person,
with the least necessary "intrusion" to describe and present the narrative.
This narrator is like God, all knowing and all seeing, but only revealing so
much as necessary so that the story's life-world has its freedom and
independence.
12. Naturalism
Influenced by Darwin, this is a form of
realism which stresses environment, the family line (and advantages/
disadvantages) and something of a deterministic outcome.
13. Picaresque
A set up and denial
of the romance, particularly a journey in search of an ideal, and shows the
characters to be foolish and in fact involved in no such thing other than
acting their predicaments as they prove too powerful or complex to resolve.
Example: Don Quixote (1605-1615)
by Cervantes; Tristram Shandy by Henry Fielding.
14. Postmodern
A general category
for those novels which deny realism,
which are post-structural in language, whose devices draw attention to the
novel as a novel. These novels are reflexive.
They can show both the creativity and repetitive nature of life. Time and space
is distorted, and characters
can inhabit more than one world. Somewhere rules are broken and ordinary narration
is disturbed.
Example: The French Lieutenant's
Woman (1969) by John Fowles.
15. Psychological
Either ordinary
grammatical introspection can be used or a stream of consciousness. The idea is to present at least part of the novel from the
mind at a cost of easy to be followed narrative.
This may be incorporated into a more conventional narrative structure or may
overtake it.
Example: Jayne Eyre (1847) by
Charlotte Brontë; Portrait of a Lady (1881) by Henry James.
16. Readerly
The text is simple to
read, and readers consume it without having to engage in the process of word
production. It is usually realist.
It would stand in binary opposition to "writerly"
except that readerly texts can be subjected to writerly analysis - thus
undermining the structuralist binary opposition and giving a post-structuralist
analysis.
Example: Concept in Barthes, R. (1975),
S/Z, London: Jonathan Cape.
17. Realism
Realistic novels are like looking glasses
through which the reader sees an ordinary world operate. This produces a story
to get lost into, because the only interest is in the characters
as they work through the plot.
18. Reflexive
The fact that here is
a novel is highlighted by devices both written and presented, and this
self-conscious, self referential, approach allows complexity to be better
presented. If coherence of the story is a problem, then a reflexive form of narration
may be suitable, or a quality of writing which disturbs the reader who would
prefer a good lost-in-the-book run-through of the plot, impossible in the
reflexive novel.
Example: The French Lieutenant's
Woman (1969) by John Fowles.
19. Romance
This form of novel
goes beyond ordinary experience and social predicaments into make-believe.
Example: Portrait of a Lady
(1881) by Henry James; Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë.
20. Satire
A form of comic novel
which intends, by lampooning, to be in fact constructive in its criticism
because it wants things to be better. It's like saying, "If only people or
institutions were more sensible or efficient then society would be
improved."
Example: Nightmare
Abbey (1818) by Thomas Love Peacock.
21. Science
fiction
A popular novel form
which involves some utopian
elements. The object is to reflect back on how we are now, as well as to dream
on the possible future where life has more potential. Another object is to
create an environment for moral discussion.
C.
Elements of Novel
1. Plot: a flow of events in
a story. The plot has five parts to it, and these are:
a. Exposition rising action
b. Climax
c. Falling action
d. Resolution
2. Setting
It refers to the
place and time in which you set your story. It must be realistic to live so the
reader can easily imagine.
3. Characterization
The characters in
novel are realistic and have full human attributes.
4. Theme
This is the major
idea or the motif of writing.
5. Conflict
The problems of the
story.
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