The English Novel Origins and Growth

What is a novel? Novel – novella – new A work of extended prose fiction (usually) with plot and developed characters Many sub-genres

What came before? Early forms of story-telling Epic poetry / Romance Subject matter: classical, mythical, religious figures and adventures – familiar stories Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde 1380s Malory: Morte D’Arthur 1469 Spenser: Faerie Queene 1590 Often symbolic / allegorical Not aiming for psychological realism or fully developed characters

17th Century Origins: lots of prose writing: journalism, essays, sermons Some fiction but very sentimental, weak, sensational, underdeveloped – focus on crime stories, pirates, murders, bigamy and incest Cervantes - Don Quixote 1605 + 1615 John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress 1678 Aphra Behn – Oroonoko 1688 - early psychological realism

Why the 18th Century? Growth of middle class Increasing literacy Cheaper and easier printing and publication Increased leisure time – esp for women https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib43SssdAAc 6 minute video

Beginnings of Realism Distinguished “modern” novel from forerunners Move away from mythical / historical Middle class characters Contemporary setting Focus on individual experience Focus on internal life Domestic / realistic situations and problems Increasing focus on “the original and the novel”

Early 18th Century Defoe: Robinson Crusoe Swift: Gulliver’s Travels 1726*

“Greatest” 18th Century novelists Richardson: Clarissa (1747-8) Fielding: The History of Tom Jones(1749) Sterne: Tristram Shandy (1759) Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) Smollett: The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751)

18th C Plot - 2 main types Focus on an individual – real people rather than mythical figures EITHER 1st person narrative – diary or letters confession of female emotions Eg. Clarissa OR 3rd person, male hero, picaresque style travels and adventures, actions, vulgarity Eg. Tom Jones

18th C Typical Plot an unhappy love affair: lower-class virtuous beauty and a gentleman unable to unite due social constraints. sudden revelation puts everything in order: Eg. as a baby the heroine was swapped by a nurse and is in fact a daughter of some lord, which makes it possible for them to marry. Provides topics of universal relevance,: love, family relations and average everyday problems AND constant emotional drama, extraordinary beauty and exciting adventure,

18th Century Styles : Picaresque – Moll Flanders Epistolary - Clarissa Self-conscious narrator – Tom Jones Didactic - Rasselas Fictional biography – Robinson Crusoe Satirical – Gulliver’s Travels Sentimental / sensibility - Pamela

Women Readers

Moral Panic! The depravity is universal … foolish, yet dangerous, books mothers, in miserable garrets, crying for the imaginary distress of an heroine, while their children were crying for bread mere habit of novel-reading as a physically harmful waste of time, damaging not only the mind and the morale of readers, but also their eyesight and posture. Circulating libraries: the “evergreen tree of the diabolical knowledge”

Mr Collins in “Pride and Prejudice” Mr. Bennet was … glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but, on beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose Fordyce’s Sermons. Lydia gaped as he opened the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him

Romantic: Late 18th Century – 1837 Austen – transition to 19th century style Plots: middle class girls seeking husbands Style: wit, irony and satire Underlying issues: social and economic dependence of women on marriage Scott - the historical novel: Ivanhoe (1820)

Gothic Uses mystery and suspense to produce a (pleasurable) sensation of fear in the reader Horace Walpole: Castle of Otranto 1764 Anne Radcliffe: 5 best sellers 1789 – 1797 Mary Shelley: Frankenstein 1818 Emphasis on terror + vulnerable heroine Aimed at young female readers

Victorian 1837 – 1901 Leading literary genre rise of women novelists: Brontes, Gaskell, Eliot 3 volumes Monthly serialisation – Dickens and Thackeray 1830s -40s: the social novel – Oliver Twist The Woman Question Realism – the dominant literary style

Victorian Novels Charles Dickens: Great Expectations Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights George Eliot: Middlemarch WM Thackeray: Vanity Fair Anthony Trollope: The Warden Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South Thomas Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge

19th Century Realism Problems of ordinary people rendered with close attention to detail and complexities of social life Cf Gothic, Romance etc Middlemarch by George Eliot Middlemarch. Chapter 15docx.docx Madame Bovary by Flaubert

Modernism – early 20th century Esp post WW1 Rejection of 19th century realism Breaking conventions of chronology and narration Stream of consciousness James Joyce: Ulysses Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway DH Lawrence: The Rainbow

Wider Reading See Reading List reading listx.docx The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt European Literature Dumas Flaubert Tolstoy Dostoyevsky Hugo