Types of English Novel

The novel is a humanist development, that looks at the complexities of life as lived in the

everyday and does it through telling a story. There is some sort of predicament, perhaps

against other people or social conventions or simply within the mind. Something has to be

worked out and resolved, hopefully. The novel does contain hope or investigates despair.

There are various categories of novel through which these happen. The first recognised

novel in England is Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe.

Click on one to find and relate

Allegory Characters
Comic novels Education
Epistolary Feminist
Gothic Ironic
Magic realism Narrative structure
Narration Naturalism
Picaresque Postmodern
Psychological Readerly
Realism Reflexive
Romance Satire
Science fiction Stream of consciousness
Style Utopian
Writerly

Allegory The surface story, while a good read in itself, is Pilgrim's Progress

but a means to an end of a deeper meaning. This (1678) by John

is common in religious stories because earthly Bunyan.

concerns are a distorted reflection of heavenly

concerns. Much concerns the trials of journeying.

Characters These are the actors who form, who must do something or something

else, and relate to the others. It is through characters that a novel

moves on. Characters may be given different levels of credibility,

perhaps the lowest in comic novels and the most in in depth

psychological moves.
Comic novels These are about people caught in situations which Vanity Fair (1848) by

draw out their own absurdities. The situation may William Makepeace

be absurd or the people themselves. Comic Thackeray.

novels can be cruel, and also have an overall

pessimistic view of life. The world is exposed as

bizarre and irrationality is emphasised. People are

self-obsessed, or follow drives that seem beyond

rational control. The worlds portrayed lack depth.

Education A character engages with a series of predicaments and learns something

about him or herself. The character may start as challenging the system,

and may come to conform, or the passage is the other way around. The

character may start young, and through growing up progress is followed.

Life can be presented as very complex through which the growing and

self-educating process takes place.

Epistolary These are in the form of letters or emails to and Pamela (1740) and

from people. If this is all it is, it can be a rather Clarissa (1748) by

restrictive format, and to get the full sense of Samuel Richardson.

place the letters or emails would have to be long,

contrived and somewhat unconvincing. There is

psychological potential. Older times when middle

class people wrote letters to each other in good

English might make better novels, although

 letters took a while to arrive. Another alternative

to this is novel in the form of diaries.

Feminist Boundaries are challenged in the ordered male A Room of One's

world. The categorising of male and female as Own (1931) by

binary opposites is undermined, particularly the Virginia Woolf

subordinate female. Alternatively women's

consciousness is highlighted within the male

dominated world, often a subculture within it, or

men too challenge the given power structures

that invade everything from decision making to

relationships.
Gothic This utopian related form of novel is often set in the past and perhaps in

some far away land of the trees, like Transylvania! The place of dilemma

is not the location but in the mind, however. The point about the

fantastical world is not to seek perfection but to show the fallacy of

seeking perfection (e.g. everlasting life) or the evil involved in seeking it

immorally. These often use Christian iconography to actually support the

general Christian viewpoint from the viewpoint of the other side.

Ironic It is the difference between how things seem and Gulliver's Travels

how they really exist. Often this is the expression (1726) by Jonathan

of views to those intended or otherwise existing, Swift.

and through expressing them creates the real

meaning or stituation desired. It is usually done

through creating absurd or unbelievable

narration. However, irony can be located in the

difference between characters' perspectives

(situational) showing that one view is far from the

 truth or indeed between their limited perspective

and the reader's greater awareness looking down

upon everything (dramatic). Satire is part of

irony, as is the comic novel.

Magic realism Events usually are bizarre and even supernatural Midnight's Children

or mythical. Rationality is undermined for the (1981) by Salman

purpose or examining what may be more real Rushdie

than the rational. The Western tradition is

parodied as a counter to its cultural imperialism

and therefore local third world ways of thinking

are presented. There is alternatively a Western

(once Eastern European) critique of authority and

power, making events produced bizarre.

Alternatively other methods challenge the

ordered world though distorting the plot, or the

narration is made strange, or the mind has a high

place alongside geographical locations, or the

novel discusses fiction itself 9or a combination of

these).
Narrative There needs to be a scene set for action to take place within. The action

structure has to be coherent, so that one thing leads to another. The characters

carry out the action, and they need introducing, and they need to

interrelate. The narrative is that underlying structure which runs the

story, arranging the elements, driving the reader through the book. Time

is dealt with, usually compressed and unevenly, and the predicament

gives the plot. The plot is the narrative manifested in the predicments

thrown up and resolved. The narrative varies in intensity and level of

 dominance, usually becoming the most imposing towards the end as the

story comes towards its closure.

Narration This can take place from different points of view. The most neutral, most

hidden approach, is the third person, with the least necessary "intrusion"

to describe and present the narrative. This narrator is like God, all

knowing and all seeing, but only revealing so much as necessary so that

the story's life-world has its freedom and independence. However, the

narrator is never invisible, and so lends itself to opening up to further

possibilities. If the novel is not realistic, if there is a hint of

postmodernism, the narrator must be ulike God. A form of variable

invisibility is to make one character the narrator, so that the narration is

located from within the book and by a participant rather than coming as

an external agent. It perhaps takes away the artificiality of the extra

eye. Unlike God, these narrators become fallible. The person who is the

central character may be relatively invisible, as no complication is

offered, but when some other character is the narrator, or more than

one person is the narrator, the business of narration itself becomes all

the more obvious and important. There may even be a character who is

nothing but a narrator, a strange non-participant yet placed within the

story. This form of narrator is as unreliable as the other characters, and

in fact presents problems if only observing and not participating like

some private eye! Narrators can be far from invisible, either because

there is more than one, or because opinions (especially moral) are being

passed. Such a narrator can even emphasise that the whole thing is

fiction, raising the question whether the narrator is the only real element

or itself part of the fiction.

Naturalism Influenced by Darwin, this is a form of realism which stresses
 environment, the family line (and advantages/ disadvantages) and

something of a deterministic outcome.

Picaresque A set up and denial of the romance, particularly a Don Quixote (1605-

journey in search of an ideal, and shows the 1615) by Cervantes;

characters to be foolish and in fact involved in no Tristram Shandy by

such thing other than atckling their predicaments Henry Fielding.

as they prove too powerful or complex to resolve.

Postmodern A general category for those novels which deny The French

realism, which are poststructural in language, Lieutenant's Woman

whose devices draw attention to the novel as a (1969) by John

novel. These novels are writerly and reflexive. Fowles.

They can show both the creativity and repetitive

nature of life. Time and space is distorted, and

characters can inhabit more than one world.

Somewhere rules are broken and ordinary

narration is disturbed.
Psychological Either ordinary grammatical introspection can be Jayne Eyre (1847) by

used or a stream of consciousness. The idea is to Charlotte Brontë;

present at least part of the novel from the mind Portrait of a Lady

at a cost of easy to be followed narrative. This (1881) by Henry

may be incorporated into a more conventional James.

narrative structure or may overtake it.

Readerly The text is simple to read, and readers consume Concept in Barthes,

it without having to engage in the process of R. (1975), S/Z,

word production. It is usually realist. It would London: Jonathan

stand in binary opposition to "writerly" except Cape.

that readerly texts can be subjected to writerly

 analysis - thus undermining the structuralist

binary opposition and giving a post-structuralist

analysis.
Realism Realistic novels are like looking glasses through So many (!) including

which the reader sees an ordinary world operate. Pride and Prejudice

This produces a story to get lost into, because the (1813) by Jane

only interest is in the characters as they work Austen, and authors

through the plot. The stories are one removed like Anthony

from say sociological observations, but with the Trollope, George

freedom given to the writer to make it up, but the Elliot.

writer is constrained by the ordinary four

dimensional universe (except with the ability to

truncate time and move across space in the

narration: the characters themselves have to

obey normal physical laws). Nevertheless, as in

social anthropology, the "data" can become very

full and rounded. Driving the plot towards

resolution often presents problems because in the

ordinary world matters are never quite so

successfully resolved as in many a realist novel.

Also the good order of a realistic novel clashes

with the disorder of society; the novelist should

face the same dilemmas as say the social

anthropologist who also faces the problem of the

device that turns complexity into a readable

account.
Reflexive The fact that here is a novel is highlighted by The French
 devices both written and presented, and this self- Lieutenant's Woman

conscious, self referential, approach allows (1969) by John

complexity to be better presented. If coherence Fowles.

of the story is a problem, then a reflexive form of

narration may be suitable, or a quality of writing

which disturbs the reader who would prefer a

good lost-in-the-book run-through of the plot,

impossible in the reflexive novel.

Romance This form of novel goes beyond ordinary Portrait of a Lady

experience and social predicaments into make- (1881) by Henry

believe. Something new is being searched for in James; Wuthering

an alternative world beyond familiar Heights (1847) by

circumstances so that the novel's purpose is a Emily Brontë.

moral or ideal issue. Nevertheless, the

transportation to some idealised world, or going

on a somewhat fantastic journey, can lead to

disappointment, and its moral outcome. The

characters' ideals can be crushed. The fantastical

journey can be a big illusion or joke, where the

reality is a series of mundane disappointments or

repeated errors. European writers tend to present

and then undermine the fantastic, whereas

Americans use the fantasy to explore matters.

Satire A form of comic novel which intends, by Nightmare Abbey

lampooning, to be in fact constructive in its (1818) by Thomas

criticism because it wants things to be better. it's Love Peacock

like saying, "If only people or institutions were

 more sensible or efficient then society would be

improved."
Science A popular novel form which involves some utopian elements. The object

fiction is to reflect back on how we are now, as well as to dream on the possible

future where life has more potential. Another object is to create an

environment for moral discussion.

Stream This is a method of writing that tries to locate Ulysses (1922) by

of predicaments in the mind of the person. Our James Joyce; To the

consciousness thoughts jump around and exhibit hopes and Lighthouse (1927) by

fears and the need for instant decisions on all Virginia Woolf.

kinds of matters, with intrusions from all over the

place. This works very badly with a neutral third

person God-like narrator. The sentences of

characters' thoughts disobey ordinary

grammatical rules and may leave their meaning

ambivalent.
Style This concerns narration specifically and the The Rainbow (1915)

method of writing in general. Each epoch seems by David Henry

to have a predominant style, but so does each Lawrence (etc.)

author. It is something of a game of recognition

to read a passage and guess the author. There

are styles of detachment and attachment,

psychological involvement or neutrality, use of

metaphor or its avoidance, emotional

engagement or cool detachment, complexity/

elaboration or simplicity, and moralising and

amorality. There are even deliberate attempts at

 different styles in the one book, say in the

postmodern novel.
Utopian This is an extreme form of romantic novel News from Nowhere

because problems are eliminated. This make- (1891) by William

believe intends to point up what could be the Morris.

case, with the possibilities of utopia, though

sometimes the characters may not be as perfect

as the world they live in and some utopias may

collapse at some point within the story, exposing

them as a sham or unavailable in the real world.

Writerly This kind of novel is usually beyond realism, Concept in Barthes,

forcing the reader to generate meaning actively R. (1975), S/Z,

from the given text. It stands at first glance in London: Jonathan

binary opposition to being readerly. Cape.

Reference: Peck, J., Coyle, M. (1993), Literary Terms and Criticism, London: Macmillan.