The term for the novel in most European languages is roman, which is derived from the
medieval term, the romance
The English name for the form is derived from the Italian novella
Novella - "a little new thing" / a short tale in prose.
Boccaccio' Decameron
The German form, Novelle - was introduced by Goethe in 1795 and carried on by Heinrich von
Kleist amongst other writers.
The German Novelle was often encompassed within a frame story based on a catastrophic
event (such as plague, war, or flood), either real or imaginary.
The individual tales are related by various reporter-narrators to divert the audience from
the misfortune they are experiencing.
Characterized by brevity, self-contained plots that end on a note of irony.
(Life After Death: The Burden of Proof - Deepak Chopra)
novella [no-vel-a], a fictional tale in prose, intermediate in length and complexity between a
*SHORT STORYand a *NOVEL, and usually concentrating on a single event or chain of events,
with a surprising turning point. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) is a fine example;
Henry James and D. H. Lawrence also favoured the novella form. The term comes from the Italian
word novella ('novelty'; plural novelle), which was applied to the much shorter stories found in
Boccaccio's Decameron (1349-53), until it was borrowed at the end of the 18th century by
Goethe and other writers in Germany, where the novella (German, *NOVELLE) in its modern
sense became established as an important literary * GENRE. In France it is known as the
nouvelle. See also conte, novelette.
Novelle [no-vel-e](plural-elleri), the German term for a fictional prose tale that concentrates on a
single event or situation, usually with a surprising conclusion. The term, adopted from the Italian
(seenovella), was introduced in 1795 by J. W. von Goethe. The outstanding German tradition of
Novellen includes works by Tieck, Kleist, and Thomas Mann, most of which conform (in terms of
length) to the English sense of 'novella'.