The Origin of Novel

 

·         The chief literary phenomena of the complex eighteenth century were the reign of so-called Classicism, the revival of romantic poetry, and the discovery of the modern novel. Of these three, the last is probably the most important. The novel is the most modern and at present the most widely read and influential genre of literature. It is the original contribution of England to the world of letters. Other great types of literature, like the epic, the romance and the drama, were first produced by other nations. England has a number of fine quality novelists.

·         The element of imagination is an important aspect of a work of fiction. The classification of works of fiction (into novels, romances and more adventure stories) depends upon the element of imagination. The term ‘novel’ was markedly distinguished from romance. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the term gradually came to suggest a work of fiction which faithfully imitated the real world in which human beings lived.

·         A novel means a book, a prose narrative (an extended narrative) which tells the story of a number of characters and the adventures, circumstances that they inhabit and undergo are, more or less, like people and places which the reader might have encountered in real life.

·          There were many European romances written in the Middle Ages. These romances differed from the kinds of fiction of today. In the romances, characters were not taken from real life. Knights, elves, fairies, magic giants, witches and marvellous adventures had no basis in experience of real life but a vague remembrance of dreams or creations of a dawning imagination. These images often lived the world of the imagination.  The interest in extraordinary beings and events marked the development of the human imagination (with no reason) and to satisfy this new interest, the romance was invented.  The people of Middle Ages delighted in the most impossible stories and the name “romance” was retained to cover any work of the unbridled imagination.

·         The romance, is originally, a work of fiction in which the imagination is given full play, without being limited by facts or probabilities. It deals with extraordinary events, with heroes whose powers are exaggerated, and often adds the element of superhuman or supernatural characters. It is impossible to draw the line where romance ends. But this element of excessive imagination and of impossible heroes and incidents is its distinguishing mark in every literature. The eighteenth century novel got its name because it broke away from the conventions of the romance.  

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Dr Johnson observed that the novel gave a true picture of real life in its setting and characterisation. The laws governing human behaviour are such as might be experienced in the lives of ordinary men and women and the touchstone of the novelist’s art is the real world of experience. The novel presents a world of facts, makes readers acquainted with men and women, some good, some bad, but all human and in a way expresses life as one knows it by experience. So the novel is the amalgamation of the intellect and imagination. It provides the stage of the awakened intellect.

·         Human beings have instinct or innate love for a story they are indebted for all their literature. The novel, to  some degree, satisfies this instinct. The story element is essential to the novel.  The novel presents an individual’s struggles and temptations, victories and failures and his or her daily choices and conflicts between good and evil.

·         The novel is a work of fiction in which the imagination and the intellect combine to express life in the form of a story and the imagination is always directed and controlled by the intellect. It is interested mainly, not in romance or adventure, but in men and women as they are; it aims to show the motives and influences which govern human life, and the effects of personal choice upon character and destiny.

·         The precursors of novel were a collection of ideal love and marvellous adventurous tales known as the Greek Romances, dating from the second to the sixth centuries which affected romance writing for the next thousand years. Another precursor is the Italian and Spanish pastoral romances which were inspired by the Eclogues  of Virgil, chiefly popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and their influence is seen later in Sidney’s Arcadia. The third predecessor of the novel is made up of romances of chivalry, such as are found in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. The old romance tends clearly towards realism, especially in England where the excessive imagination is curbed and the heroes become more human. In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the readers observe the effect of the practical English mind in giving these old romances a more natural setting, and in making the heroes suggest, though faintly, the men and women of their day. Chaucer maintained story interest and the characters are delightfully true to nature and all this suggest about a connected story whose chief aim was to reflect life as it was.

·         In the Elizabethan Age, the idea of novel grew more definite. In Sidney’s Arcadia (1580), a romance of chivalry, the pastoral setting at least is generally true to nature and the characters gave the impression of being real men and women. In Bacon’s The New Atlantis (1627) , the readers find the story of the discovery by mariners of an unknown country, inhabited by a superior race of men, more civilised than themselves; this idea which had been used by More in his Utopia (1516).

·         Nearer to the true novel is Lodge’s romantic story of Rosalynde, which was used by Shakespeare in As You Like It. This was modelled upon the Italian novella, or short story, which became very popular in England during the Elizabethan Age. In the same age, the Spanish picaresque novel (from picaro, that means a knave or rascal) was introduced into England which at first was a kind of burlesque on the medieval romance. It took for its hero some low scoundrel or outcast, instead of a knight, and followed him through a long career of scandals and villainies.  One of the earliest types of this picaresque novel in English is Nash’s The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton (1594). It is also  a forerunner of the historical novel . In picaresque novels, the emphasis was laid not so much on life and character as on the adventures of the hero; and the interest consisted largely in wondering what would happen next and how would the plot end.

·         In the Puritan Age, a reader approached still nearer to the modern novel, especially in the work of Bunyan. As the Puritan always laid emphasis on character, stories appeared having a definite moral purpose. Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) differed from the Faery Queen and from all other medieval allegories. The characters were far from being bloodless abstractions, and were but thinly disguised men and women.  Bunyan’s good work, his keen insight, his delineation of character and his emphasis upon the moral effects of individual action; was carried on by Addison and Steele some years later. The character of Sir Roger de Coverley is a real reflection of English country life in the eighteenth century and with Steele’s domestic sketches in The Tatler, The Spectator and The Guardian (1709-1713), the readers definitely crossed the border land that remained outside of romance, and entered the region of character study where the novel had its beginning.