Notes : Novel Society Class 10 Notes | EduRev

 Page 1


 A BRIEF HISTORY 
OF 
THE NOVEL 
Page 2


 A BRIEF HISTORY 
OF 
THE NOVEL 
GENERAL PARAMETERS OF 
THE NOVEL 
? GENRE: Fiction: Narrative 
? STYLE: Prose 
? LENGTH: Extended 
? PURPOSE: Mimesis:  Verisimilitude 
“The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and 
of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in 
lofty and elevated language, describes what never 
happened nor is likely to happen.”      
              Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, 1785  
Page 3


 A BRIEF HISTORY 
OF 
THE NOVEL 
GENERAL PARAMETERS OF 
THE NOVEL 
? GENRE: Fiction: Narrative 
? STYLE: Prose 
? LENGTH: Extended 
? PURPOSE: Mimesis:  Verisimilitude 
“The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and 
of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in 
lofty and elevated language, describes what never 
happened nor is likely to happen.”      
              Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, 1785  
Verisimilitude 
?a semblance of truth 
?recognizable settings and characters in real 
time 
?what Hazlitt calls, “ the close imitation of men 
and manners… the very texture of society as it 
really exists.” 
?The novel emerged when authors fused 
adventure and romance with verisimilitude 
and heroes that were not supermen but 
ordinary people, often, insignificant nobodies. 
 
 
Page 4


 A BRIEF HISTORY 
OF 
THE NOVEL 
GENERAL PARAMETERS OF 
THE NOVEL 
? GENRE: Fiction: Narrative 
? STYLE: Prose 
? LENGTH: Extended 
? PURPOSE: Mimesis:  Verisimilitude 
“The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and 
of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in 
lofty and elevated language, describes what never 
happened nor is likely to happen.”      
              Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, 1785  
Verisimilitude 
?a semblance of truth 
?recognizable settings and characters in real 
time 
?what Hazlitt calls, “ the close imitation of men 
and manners… the very texture of society as it 
really exists.” 
?The novel emerged when authors fused 
adventure and romance with verisimilitude 
and heroes that were not supermen but 
ordinary people, often, insignificant nobodies. 
 
 
Narrative Precursors to the Novel 
?Heroic Epics 
Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey,  
Mahabharata, Valmiki’s Ramayana, Virgil’s 
Aeneid, Beowulf, The Song of Roland  
?Ancient Greek and Roman Romances and 
Novels 
An Ephesian Tale and Chaereas and Callirhoe, 
Petronius’s, Satyricon, Apuleius’s The Golden 
Ass 
?Oriental Frame Tales 
The Jataka, A Thousand and One Nights 
?Irish and Icelandic Sagas 
The Tain bo Cuailinge, Njal’s Saga 
Page 5


 A BRIEF HISTORY 
OF 
THE NOVEL 
GENERAL PARAMETERS OF 
THE NOVEL 
? GENRE: Fiction: Narrative 
? STYLE: Prose 
? LENGTH: Extended 
? PURPOSE: Mimesis:  Verisimilitude 
“The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and 
of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in 
lofty and elevated language, describes what never 
happened nor is likely to happen.”      
              Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, 1785  
Verisimilitude 
?a semblance of truth 
?recognizable settings and characters in real 
time 
?what Hazlitt calls, “ the close imitation of men 
and manners… the very texture of society as it 
really exists.” 
?The novel emerged when authors fused 
adventure and romance with verisimilitude 
and heroes that were not supermen but 
ordinary people, often, insignificant nobodies. 
 
 
Narrative Precursors to the Novel 
?Heroic Epics 
Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey,  
Mahabharata, Valmiki’s Ramayana, Virgil’s 
Aeneid, Beowulf, The Song of Roland  
?Ancient Greek and Roman Romances and 
Novels 
An Ephesian Tale and Chaereas and Callirhoe, 
Petronius’s, Satyricon, Apuleius’s The Golden 
Ass 
?Oriental Frame Tales 
The Jataka, A Thousand and One Nights 
?Irish and Icelandic Sagas 
The Tain bo Cuailinge, Njal’s Saga 
Narrative Precursors to the Novel 
?Medieval European Romances 
Arthurian tales culminating in Malory’s Morte Darthur 
?Elizabethan Prose Fiction 
Gascoigne’s The Adventure of Master F. J.,Lyly’s Euphues, 
Greene’s Pandosto: The Triumph of Time, Nashe’s The 
Unfortunate Traveller, Deloney’s Jack of Newbury 
?Travel Adventures 
Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta, More’s Utopia, Swift’s Gulliver’s 
Travels, Voltaire’s Candide 
?Novelle  
Boccaccio’s Decameron, Margurerite de Navarre’s 
Heptameron 
?Moral Tales 
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progess, Johnson’s Rasselas