Novels are the piece of creative writing that are bigger than short story and way too different from the dramas. The word novel is derived from the Italian word Novella. Today the word Novella refers to a shorter version of the novel.
Novel can be said to be one of the most flexible of all literary genre. Its various parts and concepts and varieties offer the readers a new outlook and perspective towards the work of the novelist.
The writing of the novel started form the 16th century. The 16th century to the 18th century period denoted a prose narrative about characters and their actions. The early 17th century and the 18th century novels were sentimental ones.
The 19th century novels had the more gothic or societal bent, but it is important to mention that this was the period that saw the tremendous rise in the field of novel writing. Some of the most popular novelists prevailed in this era.
theory of Marxism
Therefore, this period saw a variety of sub-categories of novels. Post the mid-20th century, the novels that were written addressed social issues. During this era, especially after the World Wars, the theory of Marxism, the Freudian believes, all compounded the break down of coherence and shed belief and now it has impacted literature.
The writers in this era questioned the hierarchies in all spheres. There was growth in the experimental novels that broke away from traditional story-telling mode. These features are clearly evident in novels like Tristram Shandy and Lolita.
Existentialist writers like William Faulkner, Franz Kafka and James Joyce questioned the traditional structure of novels. Along with the development of absurdist drama, absurdist novel too developed with Journey to the end of Night being the first absurdist novel.
With this, the era saw the development of Nouveau Roma which literary means new novel. This moment was biblio-clastic that is, it projected much that had gone before.
Allan Rob Grillig, in his research paper writing, gave the theory of nature in future of novel. He regarded the earlier novelist as old fashioned, and his main idea was that novel should be an individual’s response to things. The first novel in this Nouveau Roma category was Nathalie Sarraute Tropisms. The novels written in the 18th and the 19th century period had end number of sub-categories:
Epistolary novel:
these novels were in the form of letters. The prominent one in this category being Shamela, Dangerous Liaison and the like.
Sentimental Novels:
These developed at the hands of Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson,
Romantic Novels:
Prominent one in this category Go With the Wind the American novelists Margaret Mitchell.
Gothic Novel:
The Bronte sisters were the prominent figures who worked upon these categories. Famous ones being Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
Historical Novel:
Sir Walter Scott’s novels occupy this position.
Regional Novel:
Like the ones of Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D’Urbervilles).
- Detective Novels
- Thrillers
- Crime
- Psychological
Sensational
Novels gave way to the development of anti-novels (the term first coined by Charles Sorel, in his research paper writing). Such novels have the following characteristics:
- They lack an obvious plot (unlike the novels).
- They contain diffused episodes.
- witness minimal development of characters.
- The readers, in such a case, are expecte to infer their own meanings.
- Witness an experimentation with vocabulary and punctuations.
- They contain a detailed analysis of the objects.
- Repetition is again a common feature.
- They have a variation of time sequences.
- The beginning and end to such novels are alternative.
- Sometimes one may see blank pages with geometrical patterns.
There were several themes and types of novels that developecwith time and that are important to be understand for assignment help:
- Psychological Realism:
Precisely and specifically called the Stream of Consciousness Technique. In this category the inner conflict of the characters give way to plot and character development and acquaint the readers with the other characters.
A prominent example of this type of novels is Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This type of novels paved way for the anti-realistic ones.
- Magical Realism:
The term was give Alejo Carpentier and this genre of writing subverts the existing condition of realism.
In such a case magic is consider to be normal and real in the world of the story and its characters. Prominent example in this category is Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
- Metafiction:
this was a postmodernist trait. It suspends the illusion of mimesis and reveals the artificial nature of art. It refers to the anti-illusionist mode of narrative fiction.
This genre of writing lays its technique threadbare- making obvious references to the story, a story within a story and a conversation with the author.
Linda Hutchins, a post modernist critic, came up with her own term known as Historiographic Metafiction, in 1988, that referred to fictional texts that bring history into them.
Bildungsroman:
This type of novel witnesses the development of the protagonist of the novel, as the event in his or her life pass, as happens with Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.
Picaresque:
It can be say to be a realistic fiction that originated in Spain. Here the protagonist is a picaro. It gives an autobiographical account of adventures, misfortunes and punishments of the protagonist.
All picaros had a series of owners from whom picaro got his way out either by cheating or deceit. Such novels were tell a narrator and it was a must that the picaro kept on travelling as happens in Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe.
Thus, these were a few basic points on novels that students pursuing literature can refer to for assignment help. Furthermore, an in-depth study is require to understand all these points clearly and put them into play.
