Portal:Novels
The Novels Portal
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story (of something new)", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance". M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Such "romances" should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love.
Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form. There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it. The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era. Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.
Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebooks. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels. While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently. (Full article...)
The Historian is the 2005 debut novel of American author Elizabeth Kostova. The plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad III the Impaler (pictured) and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula. Kostova's father told her stories about Dracula when she was a child, and later in life she was inspired to turn the experience into a novel. She worked on the book for ten years and then sold it within a few months to Little, Brown, and Company, which bought it for a remarkable US$2 million. The Historian has been described as a combination of genres, including Gothic novel, adventure novel, detective fiction, travelogue, postmodern historical novel, epistolary epic, and historical thriller. It is concerned with history's role in society and representation in books, as well as the nature of good and evil. The evils brought about by religious conflict are a particular theme, and the novel explores the relationship between the Christian West and the Islamic East. Little, Brown, and Company heavily promoted the book and it became the first debut novel to become number one on The New York Times bestseller list in its first week on sale. As of 2005, it was the fastest-selling hardback debut novel in US history. Kostova received the 2006 Book Sense award for Best Adult Fiction and the 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year. Sony has bought the film rights and, as of 2007, were planning an adaptation.
Selected novel quote
- Incredulity doesn't kill curiosity; it encourages it. Though distrustful of logical chains of ideas, I loved the polyphony of ideas. As long as you don't believe in them, the collision of two ideas -- both false -- can create a pleasing interval, a kind of diabolus in musica. I had no respect for some ideas people were willing to stake their lives on, but two or three ideas that I did not respect might still make a nice melody. Or have a good beat, and if it was jazz, all the better.
Did you know...
- ...that Alistair Beaton predicted the flooding of New Orleans in his 2004 satirical novel A Planet for the President?
- ...that Burning Bright by John Steinbeck (pictured) was an attempt at a new form of literature, the "play-novelette"— but both the play and novel were savaged by the critics and Steinbeck never wrote for the theatre again?
- ...that The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, a science fiction novel by Doris Lessing, was adapted for the opera in 1997 by Philip Glass?
General images
- First edition of
- "Oh Edward! How can you?", a late-19th-century illustration from
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fairy-circle from a 17th-century chapbook (from Chapbook)Woodcut of a
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Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) (Pictured: Its title page) (from Picaresque novel)The picaresque genre began with the Spanish novel
- 1474: The customer in the copyist's shop with a book he wants to have copied. This illustration of the first printed German
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novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines. (from Adventure fiction)Adventure
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Chinua Achebe, Buffalo, 2008 (from Novel)
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Les Vampires (1915–16) (from Novelization)Novelization of chapter 8 of the film series
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Peter and Wendy (from Novelization)1915 novelization of the original 1904 play
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Jack the Giant Killer (from Chapbook)The chapbook
- Statue of
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Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (from Novel)
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Richard Head, The English Rogue (1665) (from Novel)
- King Kong (1932) novelization of King Kong (1933) (from
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J. K. Rowling, 2010 (from Novel)
- A nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss-French painter
- Harlequin novels (from
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Macau (from Light novel)A light novel bookstore in
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Voltaire's The Extraordinary Tragical Fate of Calas, depicting Jean Calas being broken on the wheel (from Chapbook)The frontispiece of a late 18th-century chapbook edition of
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladivostok, 1995 (from Novel)
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The Golden Ass by Apuleius, which he published sometime in the 2nd century AD. (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library) (1345 illustration). (from Picaresque novel)One of the most influential novels on the picaresque genre was
- A modern chapbook (from
- Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711). (from
- Image from a Victorian edition of
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Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction (from Novel)Paper as the essential carrier:
- 1719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe (from
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- File:Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Graziella, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg
- File:N. M. Price - Sir Walter Scott - Guy Mannering - At the Kaim of Derncleugh.jpg
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