Rise of the Novel

The rise of the novel, a genre that received a status of popularity equal to that of Elizabethan drama during the Renaissance, is one of the three, along with Neoclassicism and Pre-Romanticism, major aspects of the eighteenth-century British literature. The typology of the eighteenth century novel is remarkable: picaresque novel, adventure novel, epistolary novel, sentimental novel, novel of manners, moral novel, comic novel, the anti-novel, and others. Like in the seventeenth century, the picaresque narrative remains popular and influential, and in English literature, in particular – along with moral and didactic purpose, neoclassical influence, and other thematically textualized aspects – it contributed to the rise of the novel as a distinct literary genre, a phenomenon that occurred in England much later than on the Continent. Or rather, the comic (including satirical) attitude, social concern, and moral didacticism – emerging from both picaresque tradition and neoclassical principles – and together with picaresque tradition and neoclassical principles – are responsible for the emergence of verisimilitude as the forming element responsible in turn for the rise of the literary system of the novel in the eighteenth century English literature. Among them, the present article attempts to emphasize the contribution to the occurring of this cultural and literary phenomenon by the neoclassical principles and the moral concern reflected in the novels. Keywords: the rise of the English novel; verisimilitude; neoclassicism; ethical didacticism; picaresque.

O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a ficção de Camilo Castelo Branco e Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, escritores muito populares em Portugal e no Brasil, respectivamente, entre as décadas de 1840 e 1880, período em que publicaram suas expressivas produções, que englobam romances, contos, poemas e peças de teatro, que foram, de certa forma, obliteradas pela historiografia literária ao longo do século XX. A fim de abranger uma parte significativa de suas produções ficcionais, foram selecionadas obras que, num primeiro momento, poderiam representar os principais subgêneros do romance oitocentista: os romances sentimentais Amor de Perdição e A Moreninha; as narrativas de viagem Vinte Horas de Liteira e A Carteira de Meu Tio; as narrativas fantásticas O Esqueleto e A Luneta Mágica; os romances históricos O Demônio do Ouro e As Mulheres de Mantilha; e os romances (pré-) naturalistas O Senhor Ministro e As Vítimas-Algozes. A partir da leitura destas obras, é possível depreender aspectos convergentes entre os autores, como a subversão de algumas convenções romanescas, a quebra de expectativas de leitura e o desvio das temáticas recorrentes e dos procedimentos narrativos mais usuais no século XIX. Sendo assim, o estudo parte da hipótese de que, por terem sido protagonistas da ascensão do romance em Portugal e no Brasil, periferias do capitalismo na expressão utilizada por Roberto Schwarz , países que, além disso, partilhavam a mesma língua e um fundo cultural comum, esses escritores compartilharam contextos socioculturais, de certa forma, similares. Se por um lado, a fim de atender ao mercado consumidor, precisavam manter os laços com a literatura em voga, por outro procuravam distanciar-se dela, num movimento de adesão e repulsa aos modelos romanescos.

The objective of this work is to analyze the fiction of Camilo Castelo Branco and Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, very popular writers in Portugal and Brazil, respectively, among the 1840s and 1880s, a period in which they published their expressive productions, which include novels, short stories, poems and plays, that were somehow obliterated by literary historiography throughout the 20th century. In order to cover a significant part of their fictional productions, works that, at first, could represent the major subgenres of 19th century novel were selected: the sentimental novels Amor de Perdição and A Moreninha; the travel narratives Vinte Horas de Liteira and A Carteira de Meu Tio; the fantastic narratives O Esqueleto and A Luneta Mágica; the historical novels O Demônio do Ouro and As Mulheres de Mantilha; and the (pre-)naturalist novels O Senhor Ministro and As Vítimas-Algozes. From the reading of these works, it is possible to deduce converging aspects between these authors, as the subversion of novelistic conventions, the break of reading expectations and the deviation from the recurring thematic and the narrative procedures most commonly used in the 19th century. Thus, the study starts from the hypothesis that, because they were protagonists of the rise of the novel in Portugal and Brazil, peripheries of capitalism in the expression used by Roberto Schwarz , countries that also shared the same language and a common cultural background, these writers shared, in some ways, similar socio-cultural contexts. On one hand, in order to serve the consumer market, they needed to maintain ties with the literature in vogue, on the other they sought to distance themselves from it, in a movement of attraction and repulsion by the novelistic models.

The present article proposes a quantitative analysis of the evolution of the novel in Romania. The study de facto compares, based on the data provided by Dicționarul cronologic al romanului românesc (Chronological dictionary of the Romanian novel, abbr. DCRR) and by Dicționarul cronologic al romanului tradus în România (Chronological dictionary of the translated novel in Romania, abbr. DCRT) for the period between 1845 and 2000, the evolution of the number of domestic novels and that of the number of translated novels in Romania, as well as the ratio between these values, which, dubbed the “index of literary autonomy” (ILA), serves as a measure of the degree of (in)dependence of the Romanian literary system. Starting from the aforementioned data and concepts, the present research delimits four phases in the development of the novel in Romania (1845–1917; 1918–1947; 1948–1989; 1990–2019) and attempts explanations of the diverse variations in novelistic production—especially its “rises” and “falls”—based on the various political, economic and cultural factors which caused them.

Link to the article:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/eighteenth_century_fiction/v027/27.2.maioli.html

In this article I claim that the theory of fiction Henry Fielding developed in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones is meant to address an understudied tension between empiricism and the pedagogic ambitions of the eighteenth-century novel. Empiricist philosophers like John Locke and David Hume dismissed imaginative narratives as unlikely sources of socio-ethical knowledge, which they insisted should be drawn instead from direct experience or reliable factual reports. I argue that Fielding’s moral epistemology was more fundamentally empirical than scholars usually recognize, and that an important function of his theoretical chapters in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones is to show that prose fiction can be sufficiently grounded in the data of experience to meet the epistemic standards of empiricism. Fielding, I suggest, pursues this goal by developing two theses: first, that his characters and events are embodiments of principles derived inductively from observation and experience, and, second, that the conformity between the copies and the originals can be empirically measured by the reader’s subjective sense of probability.

One of the most controversial issues in academic discussions has been the inconsistent characterisation of Don Quixote as a madman with instances of sanity. What this article is mainly concerned with is the analysis of particularly the ending of this well known work where the representation of Don Quixote is completely left ambiguous in terms of his being triumphant or a loser. There is no critical agreement on the reasons why Cervantes created such an ambiguous character. However what seems to be clear regarding this issue is that, from the very beginning of the novel, Cervantes tries to portray Don Quixote as a madman, because the story begins with the narrator's explicit interpretation about a poor gentleman called Alonso Quijano who seems to go insane from reading too many chivalric romances and decides to become an errant knight. Nonetheless, Quixote's madness and naiveté seem undoubtedly to have put his life in danger while his restoring his health seems to have killed him. Therefore, the primary goal of this article is to clarify whether his alleged madness represented through his chivalric deeds makes him a loser or not.

Interdisciplinary  study of the discourses of race and racism as they shaped Anglophone narratives of freedom--political, historical, and literary. Analysis of African-Atlantic and Anglo-Atlantic-world authors ranging from Behn, Equiano, Defoe, Richardson, Susanna Rowson, and Harriet Wilson, through Brockden Brown, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, and George Eliot, to Pauline Hopkins, Virginia Woolf, and Nella Larsen.

OPEN ACCESS: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58641-6
This open access book discusses British literature as part of a network of global entangled modernities and shared aesthetic concerns, departing from the retrospective model of a postcolonial “writing back” to the centre. Accordingly, the narrative strategies in the texts of early Black Atlantic authors, like Equiano, Sancho, Wedderburn, and Seacole, and British canonical novelists, such as Defoe, Sterne, Austen, and Dickens, are framed as entangled tonalities. Via their engagement with discourses on slavery, abolition, and imperialism, these texts shaped an understanding of national belonging as a form of familial feeling. This study thus complicates the “rise of the novel” framework and British middle-class identity formation from a transnational perspective combining approaches in narrative studies with postcolonial and queer theory.

Love in Excess by Eliza Haywood Experimenting with the narrative in finding an expression of emotions by using theatrical elements in Love in Excess Love in Excess by Eliza Haywood is a novel of amatory fiction and is experimental in terms of its' narration. Its' narration is experimental in terms of being a novel establishing a 'new form of expression' for passion and emotions (Anderson 7). However, when Eliza Haywood's background in acting and scriptwriting is taken into account, it also provides a reason why Love in Excess has a new and different form of narration (7). Love in Excess will be analyzed in this paper in terms of its narrative features in searching a new form of expression of 'passion and desire' and in terms of including theatrical elements due to the author's previous experience in drama by references to the novel and previous literary studies. Love in Excess deals with the theme of liberating female sexual desire and its characters are trying to find a way of expressing their passion. The trouble the characters have in the expression of this desire is because it is 'unacceptable' for a woman to show their passion openly to a man in the 18 th century and because they are expected to be 'virtuous' (Saxton 3,4). This trouble leads the characters to find a way of expressing their desire without 'staining' their reputation. For this reason, Alovisa, who is attracted to Count D'elmont and wants him to know that she wants him, starts writing anonymous letters to him when "[…] love (ingenious at invention) inspired her […]" to write letters "[…] which probably let her into the secrets of his [D'elmont's] heart without the shame of revealing her own" (Haywood 39). In this way, Alovisa writes her first letter to D'elmont and letters become a form of expressing 'female desire' and also lead to some 'dramatic' moments in the novel when Amena reads the letter given to her by D'elmont 'at parting' and understands that it is Alovisa's writing learns that Alovisa is her rival in earning the heart of D'elmont (62). Unnamed letters create mystery and suspense in the novel, as they would in the theatre, and also lead to moments of crisis when they are discovered by chance, and in this way add a 'chance' element. These are very similar to the use of letters for dramatic effect in theatre and show that the narrative of the novel is experimenting with several different techniques to find a means of expression the female love and desire in the 18 th century.

Resumo: Este artigo pretende examinar a atividade de Rousseau como escritor a fim de mostrar que, do ponto de vista da relação entre literatura e filosofia, uma análise da Nova Heloísa nos ajuda a compreender o pensamento político do Contrato Social. Trata-se de comparar as imagens do escritor político e do romancista considerando-se a ideia de pacto de leitura. As mudanças de mentalidades no quadro histórico descrito consideram, por um lado, a medicalização dos discursos sobre a moral, e por outro, o reconhecimento do romance como gênero literário compatível com certos modelos de virtude. //

« Roman et philosophie au siècle des Lumières: Rousseau écrivain »

Résumé : Cet article se propose d'examiner l'activité de Rousseau en écrivain pour montrer que, du point de vue du rapport entre littérature et philosophie, une analyse de La Nouvelle Héloïse nous aide à comprendre la pensée politique du Contrat Social. Il s'agit de comparer les images de l'écrivain politique et du romancier en considérant l'idée de pacte de lecture. Les changements de mentalités dans le tableau historique décrit concernent, d'une part, la médicalisation des discours sur la moralité et, d'autre part, la reconnaissance du roman comme un genre littéraire compatible avec certains modèles de vertu.

Marking the 300th anniversary of the publication of the first novel in English, this essay examines different forms of opening sentence in English and American novels.  It is arranged into five sections, each dealing with a different aspect of the novel's opening.
Working from a rich range of examples, the first two sections consider how certain authors start their novels running, unpacking their first sentences to show the complex information being communicated to the reader.  Authors include Aldous Huxley, Thomas Pynchon, J.D. Salinger, Sam Selvon, Ross McDonald, John Grisham, Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Angela Carter, Kenneth Fearing, Sylvia Plath, Philip Kerr & John Marsden.
The next section of the essay turns to how the opening passages operate in four major novels, analysing the first paragraphs of 'Dark Passage' by David Goodis, 'A Farewell to Arms' by Ernest Hemingway, 'Good Morning, Midnight' by Jean Rhys, & 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen.
The final sections of the essay quickly trace the historical appearance of rival forms of opening passage, beginning with ' Robinson  Crusoe' and 'A Journal of he Plague Year' by Daniel Defoe, then moving through 'Pamela' by Samuel Richardson, 'Joseph Andrews' by Henry Fielding, 'The Mysteries of Udolpho' by Ann Radcliffe, 'The Monk' by Matthew Lewis, then finishing with 'Hard Times' by Charles Dickens.

This senior seminar focused on 4 novels: Moll Flanders, Pamela, Evelina, and Pride and Prejudice, as a means through which to discuss the concept of "the rise of the novel." Novel readings were supplemented with secondary sources on the rise of the novel as well as criticism of that concept.

This study deals with realism in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Realism in the study explained the straightforward treatment in life. Realism sheds light on the immediate, the specific actions and their verifiable consequences. Realism seeks a direct connection between representation and the subject. The study is aimed to interpret the actualities of any aspect of life, not restricted to subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. First, an introduction is presented about Realism, which is comprehensively linked to the history of realism and its revolution. Then, the reasons that affected development of English novel will be explained in details. Moreover, we give an extensive emphasis on realism in English literature and describe the novel in 18th century. Then, characteristics of English novel is explained in details and definitions of realism according to a number of authors expressed then we talk about Daniel Defoe as the father of early English novel. Finally, Robinson Crusoe is analyzed and the most important themes of the novel such as colonialism and realism are shed light on to show the degree of similitude in the novel that drew the attention of its readers since the 18 th century.

Link to the article:
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/studies_in_english_literature/v054/54.3.maioli.pdf

While novelists like Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding presented their novels as firmly grounded in observation and experience, and consequently as valuable sources of socio-ethical knowledge, empiricists like David Hume were consistently dismissive of the cognitive value of prose fiction. My goal in this article is to show, through a case study of Hume, that the empiricist attitude reflected a theoretical tension between the principles of empiricism and the methods of literary representation. I start by suggesting that Hume’s view of historical narratives as invaluable sources of empirical knowledge implies that some imaginative narratives may have a similar heuristic value. Hume acknowledges as much in his frequent use of thought experiments, which employ counterfactual scenarios in support of factual claims; yet he denies that imaginative literature in general and the novel in particular are similarly valid forums for counterfactual reasoning. Hume’s reason for this – as I show by examining his Treatise of Human Nature, the two Enquiries, and the Essays – is that fictional narratives fail to observe the rules that a valid thought experiment should follow. Poetry fails because in Hume’s conception the goals of the poet are better attained through studied deviations from the truth. But the novel fails not because of such aesthetic imperatives (which it often eschews), but because novelists seek to portray the complex dynamics of social life on a scope that is way too vast to be reliably controlled by human prognosis. As far as it refers to the novel, Hume’s attitude is therefore an extension of his empiricism. For Hume, narratives that go beyond the narrow limits of a thought experiment can only be cognitively valuable if they record actual states of affairs, in all their particularity and unpredictability.