NOVELS

I. The definition of Novels

II. The development history

NOVELS III. The kinds of novels

IV. Characteristics

V. Works and Authors

 I. The definition of Novels:
Novel: an invented prose narrative of considerable
length and a certain complexity that deals
imaginatively with human experience, usually
through a connected sequence of events involving a
group of persons in a specific setting. Within its
broad framework, the genre of the novel has
encompassed an extensive range of types and
styles: picaresque, epistolary, Gothic, romantic,
realist, historical – to name only some of the more
important ones.
 II. The development history:
Historical novel, a novel that has as its setting a period of history and that
attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with
realistic detail and fidelity (which is in some cases only apparent fidelity) to
historical fact. The work may deal with actual historical personages, as does
Robert Graves’s I, Claudius (1934), or it may contain a mixture of fictional and
historical characters. It may focus on a single historic event, as does Franz Werfel’s
Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1934), which dramatizes the defense of an Armenian
stronghold. More often it attempts to portray a broader view of a past society in
which great events are reflected by their impact on the private lives of fictional
individuals. Since the appearance of the first historical novel, Sir Walter Scott’s
Waverley(1814), this type of fiction has remained popular. Though some historical
novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1865–69), are of the highest artistic
quality, many of them are written to mediocre standards. One type of historical
novel is the purely escapist costume romance which, making no pretense to
historicity, uses a setting in the past to lend credence to improbable characters
and adventures
III. The kinds of novels: 7 kinds
1. Chevalric romance

Appear in Central and Southern

Europe
2. Picaresque novel
3. Gothic novel
4. Roman detective

Investigate the case

5. Historical novel

Character from historical fact

6. Educational novels

The maturation process of a human

7. Autobiographical novel

Author writes their life

IV. Characteristics of novels:

Innovation
Though perhaps not a hard rule for each specimen or even mentioned by many
novelists, novels as a whole represent literary change.
Indeed, the novel has seen countless adaptations over the years and continues to
evolve constantly, unlike some other literary formats that have become frozen in
their development
Length
The length of a novel is argued about constantly. Though, there is a fairly
standard range, with the shortest containing somewhere between 60-70,000
words and all but the very longest coming in around 200,000.
Character and Plot Development
The situations that these people find themselves in are also typically more
involved and complex. These story lines frequently involve perspectives of
the action: one representing the external situation itself, another the internal
conditions that coincide with, result from, or caused this series of events.
Publication Practices
 Some magazines of 19th century still novel . But the size and complexity of
many novels make it infeasible to publish them in any other way than as their
own independent, self – contained works. Individually volumes are most
common to find , but digital versions are becoming more and more prevalent.
V. Works and Author

Things Fall Apart by

Chinua Achebe (1958)
The God of Small Things
 by Arundhati Roy (1997)
A Fine Balance by
Rohinton Mistry (1995)
Sherlock Homlmes
by Conan Doyle
The Lord of the Rings by
JRR Tolkien (1954 - 1955)
Harry Potter series by
JK Rowling (1997-2007)