The Rise of The Novel

THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Definition
A Novel is a fictitious prose narrative or tale presenting a picture of real life. It is an invented prose
narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human
experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific
setting.
Literary and non-literary influences

- In the eighteenth century, with the growth of publishing and with the intellectual climate of
the Enlightenment, there was a great demand for new historical writing.
- The increase in literacy rates brought about a demand for more written text. Through this,
the growth of the reading audience allowed authors to write more novels.
- Letters gave fiction the basis of the epistolary novel, echoing the newly established fashion of
letter writing among the middle and upper classes. Letters remain a unique insight into mid-
eighteen century upper class attitudes and life-style.
- The middle class was made up of numerous merchants and manufacturers who amassed
great fortunes and were able to enlarge their political influence and consequently increase
their social influence. This made a lot of trades more lucrative and dignified. They became
quite liberated in their thoughts and began to challenge certain laws that existed. All these
changes and supposed chaos gave thought-leaders more to write about.
- Restoration Comedy of manners
It is an entertainment form which satirizes the manners and affections of social class or of
multiple classes.
The plot of such a comedy, usually concerned with an illicit love affair or similarly scandalous
matter, is subordinate to the play’s brittle atmosphere, witty dialogue, and pungent
commentary on human foibles.
- A picaresque novel is a genre of fiction where the reader will follow the adventures of a
roguish hero or heroine, who normally live outside of the social norm and have a certain
charm about them. They are comedic/satirical (offers a humorous look at the corrupt world),
and are told in the first person. The picaresque is one of the earliest forms of the novel and is
said to have its roots in chivalric romance, although the picaro is not exactly heroic.
- Journalism
The first British novels appeared in weekly installments in periodicals, therefore writers were
no longer dependent on patrons for their living, and this granted them greater creative
freedom. The newspapers helped the reading culture among the lower class.
- Puritanism
The 18th century, in Britain, is generally considered a golden age, it is a time of surprising broad
views and growing freedoms, an age of greater individual awareness that brought more and more
people to believe in the right to pursue happiness through personal fulfilment, a time during which
entertainment and sexual gratification were no longer associated with sin and even women were
granted more freedom, as long as they saved appearances to preserve respectability.
Religious publishing was still very popular, especially among the lower classes, for their moral
support and guidance since many people continued to rely on Puritan morality.
- Scientific philosophy
Literature of this time reflected the worldwide Age of Enlightenment and Reason. This was a
time of the celebration of the human mind and all the progress humanity had made, there
was an increased emphasis on a rational and scientific approach to the issues of the time.
Thinkers in Britain to France and even throughout Europe began to question the traditional
normalcy they were born into and had adopted through their lives.
Main representatives
Daniel Defoe (around 1660 - 1731) was an English novelist, pamphleteer and journalist, author of
Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
● Robinson Crusoe:
The key point to comprehend Defoe’s novel lies within the context: early eighteenth-century
mercantilism and “man’s communion with his environment”. This reminds of Britain expanding its
colonial sights and becoming the richest country of all through different expeditions like the
Caribbean or Africa. Crusoe is the personification of those expeditions: obsessed with money and
taking pleasure in physical objects. Man Friday himself becomes a slave of his property, too.
Samuel Richardson (1689 - 1761) was an English novelist who expanded the dramatic possibilities of
the novel by his invention and use of the letter form called epistolary novel (a novel told through the
medium of letters written by one or more of the characters).
● Pamela or, Virtue Rewarded

This novel created a fashion for the epistolary novel which gives several correspondents the
opportunity to set forth a point of view. Although one character dominates, this multiplicity
of viewpoints creates the impression of diversity leading to consensus. In the case of Pamela,
almost all the letters come from the heroine alone.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
With Samuel Richardson, he is considered a founder of the English novel. Among his major novels are
Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749). He his novel-writing career with Shamela, a pastiche
of Pamela, which humorously attacked the hypocritical morality which that novel displayed. His style
of writing was humorous and ironic, with an omniscient narrative presence controlling the lives and
destinies of his characters.
 Joseph Andrews: the hero no longer makes a crusade to the Holy Land, but the crusade is a
personal one, with chivalry learned on the way, and adventure replacing self-sacrifice and
battle. The reader is invited to sympathise with the hero, despite his faults or his
disreputable ways, trusting the omniscient and frequently intrusive narratorial voice to bring
the story to a proper conclusion.
Lawrence Sterne (1713 – 1768). He wrote Tristram Shandy (1759–67), an experimental novel issued
in nine parts in which the story is subordinate to its narrator’s free associations and digressions. It is
considered one of the most important ancestors of psychological and stream of consciousness
fiction.
 Tristam Shandy
Tristram Shandy is narrated by the title character in a series of digressions and interruptions that
purportedly show the "life and opinions" — part of the novel's full title — of Tristram. His inability to
get to the point is, ironically, the point of the novel since he’s relating his "life and opinions” in a
disjointed fashion.
Tristram Shandy set the stage for experimental literature. It was perhaps the first stream-of-
consciousness narrative (narrative device which tries to write the equivalent of the character’s
thought process).
An experimental novel is one that breaks the conventions of its time; what is experimental at one
juncture may be considered mainstream at another. Many techniques that were once radical (stream
of consciousness, multiple narrative lines, stories within stories, or an unreliable narrator) are now
part of the accepted techniques of writing.

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THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

Literary and non-literary influences

● Pamela or, Virtue Rewarded

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