Presentation is loading. Please wait.

Presentation is loading. Please wait.

The English Novel Origins and Growth.

Published byStephanie Payne Modified over 5 years ago

Similar presentations

Presentation on theme: "The English Novel Origins and Growth."— Presentation transcript:

1 The English Novel Origins and Growth

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

3 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 Spenser: Faerie Queene Often symbolic / allegorical Not aiming for psychological realism or fully developed characters

4 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 John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress 1678 Aphra Behn – Oroonoko early psychological realism

5 Why the 18th Century? Growth of middle class Increasing literacy
Cheaper and easier printing and publication Increased leisure time – esp for women 6 minute video

6 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”

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

8 “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)

9 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

10 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,

11 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

12 Women Readers

13 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”

14 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

15 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)

16 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

17 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

18 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

19 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

20 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

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

Download ppt "The English Novel Origins and Growth."

Similar presentations

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731).

Daniel Defoe ( ).
Literary Periods British Literature 2013-2014.

Literary Periods British Literature
BRITISH LITERATURE AN OUTLINE (up to 18th cent.).

BRITISH LITERATURE AN OUTLINE (up to 18th cent.).
The Victorian Period ( ) A Period of Progress and Decline

The Victorian Period ( ) A Period of Progress and Decline
Bram Stoker Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Thomas Hardy Lewis Carroll.

Bram Stoker Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Thomas Hardy Lewis Carroll.
Social Background England was the “workshop of the world.”

Social Background England was the “workshop of the world.”
The Rise of the Novel Defoe and Swift. Dates 1660: Restoration of Charles II 1666: the Great Fire of London 1685: accession of James II 1688-89: the Glorious.

The Rise of the Novel Defoe and Swift. Dates 1660: Restoration of Charles II 1666: the Great Fire of London 1685: accession of James II : the Glorious.
Novel, n. A long fictional prose narrative, usually filling one or more volumes and typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

Novel, n. A long fictional prose narrative, usually filling one or more volumes and typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.
Introduction The 18th c novel.

Introduction The 18th c novel.
The Romantic Novel: Introduction. Outline The landscape of fiction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Historical development of the.

The Romantic Novel: Introduction. Outline The landscape of fiction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Historical development of the.
The rise of the novel Bartholomew Dandridge, A Lady reading Belinda beside a fountain, 1745. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

The rise of the novel Bartholomew Dandridge, A Lady reading Belinda beside a fountain, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.
The Novel A Brief History ENGL 124 B03 Winter 2010.

The Novel A Brief History ENGL 124 B03 Winter 2010.
Unit 5 Defoe and Swift Aims of Teachings:

Unit 5 Defoe and Swift Aims of Teachings:
If there is a word to describe this age it will be the concept of Realism. The Victorian novel appealed to readers because of this. Novels were described.

If there is a word to describe this age it will be the concept of Realism. The Victorian novel appealed to readers because of this. Novels were described.
Rodgers 1/9/15 THE NOVEL: A CONTEMPORARY GENRE.  The novel is typically said to have emerged in the 18 th century, and along with this emergence, surpassed.

Rodgers 1/9/15 THE NOVEL: A CONTEMPORARY GENRE.  The novel is typically said to have emerged in the 18 th century, and along with this emergence, surpassed.
Jane Eyre A Victorian novel: a woman’s quest for love and her search for identity A Victorian novel: a woman’s quest for love and her search for identity.

Jane Eyre A Victorian novel: a woman’s quest for love and her search for identity A Victorian novel: a woman’s quest for love and her search for identity.
A (Ridiculously) Short History of the Novel. Early Prose Narratives Boccaccio’s Decameron (1351-1353) Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (c. 1469) Miguel.

A (Ridiculously) Short History of the Novel. Early Prose Narratives Boccaccio’s Decameron ( ) Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (c. 1469) Miguel.
Time Periods in British Literature

Time Periods in British Literature
BRITISH LITERATURE (from 19th cent. up to now). ROMANTICISM (first half of 19th cent.)

BRITISH LITERATURE (from 19th cent. up to now). ROMANTICISM (first half of 19th cent.)
Narrative Perspective Stylistics 551 Lecture 26. Narrator The narrator tells the story in a novel. Novels contain simple stories which, in their telling,

Narrative Perspective Stylistics 551 Lecture 26. Narrator The narrator tells the story in a novel. Novels contain simple stories which, in their telling,

Similar presentations

Ads by Google