The Novel
Henry Fielding described the novel as a “comic-epic poem in prose.” (Remember, some
think of the Odyssey as the first novel).
Tobias Smollet described the novel as “a large diffused picture, comprehending the
character of life.”
One definition: a fictional narrative in prose, of substantial length.
The Novel is similar to the Romance, which is broadly defined as “a continuous narrative
in which the emphasis is on what happens in the plot, rather than what is reflected from
ordinary life or experience. Modern counterparts could be the spy or detective novel, the
western, and most Science Fiction.
The big difference between Novel and Romance:
1. There is an aspect of wish-fulfillment in Romance, whereas in the Novel there
is an aspect of disillusionment.
2. Romance renders the world more poetic and more adventurous, while the novel
demythifies the world.
The Novel records the passage from a state of ignorance to a state of experience, from
that ignorance which is bliss to a mature recognition of the actual way of the world. The
Novel deals with the distinction between appearance and reality.
The protagonist of the Novel often moves from the restricted awareness of childhood, or
naiveté, to the wider experience of maturity.
The Novel is generally realistic, then, because it deals with disillusionment—the
evaporation of the illusions of childhood, which are replaced by a more mature wisdom
and recognition of how the world really works.
Like the hero of Romance, the hero of the Novel is often on a quest—often the idealistic
goals of the hero are not fulfilled, but he learns what it means to be a mature individual
and he learns to cope with the real world.
Often, if the novel ends happily, it is because the hero succeeds because he has dropped
all of his previous illusions; thus, the theme of the Novel is essentially that of formation,
of education.
The Novel is thought to derive from its immediate predecessor, the Romance of the
Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Mock Romance is a crucial step in the development
of the Novel; thus the could be seen as an Anti-Romance, as in Don Quixote.
(Note how the same characteristics of Novel and Romance apply to films).