FACULTY OF Department of English

Studies
LETTERS AND Module: Novel 1

HUMANITIES Prof. Hanane El Aissi

 WHAT IS A NOVEL?

The Novel:
“this most pliable of all forms”
 WHAT IS A NOVEL?

“The novel is the epic of a world that

has been abandoned by God.”
 WHAT IS A NOVEL?

“The novel is the only developing genre and therefore it

reflects more deeply, more essentially, more sensitively
and rapidly, reality itself in the process of its unfolding.”
 WHAT IS THE NOVEL?
“The novel from Defoe to Woolf is a product of
modernity, and modernity is the period in which we
cannot agree even on fundamentals. Our values and
beliefs are fragmented and discordant, and the novel
reflects this condition. It is the most hybrid of literary
forms, a space in which different voices, idioms and
belief-systems continually collide. Because of this, no
one of them can predominate without a struggle.”
 THE NOVEL AND ITS
LITERARY MAGNITUDE
CHARACTERS

Round Flat
Characters

Dynamic Static
 SETTING
Place Time
Where? When?
 THE PLOT
It is the structure of the novel’s action.
If the story is just a synopsis or summary of events in the novel, the
plot is how these events relate to one another and in what ways.
The plot achieves certain effects such as : Tragedy, comedy, romance,
satire. . .
 THE POINT OF
VIEW
The mode or perspective by which the story is told: who tells the story?

Third-person limited Third person

First person narrator
narrator omniscient narrator
CONFLICT
Social

The
Internal character
physical

psychologi
cal
 CLIMAX

The turning
point of a
Rising events story

Exposition
THE THEME
Signifies the author’s message and idea such as freedom,
marriage, prejudice , racism, colonialism . . .
LITERARY
DEVICES
LITERARY DEVICES:
TECHNIQUES TO CREATE
EFFECTS.

Allusion

Symbolis Figurative
m language

Allegory Flashback Irony Imagery

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Please see reference in the course description document.

 ASSIGNMENT

Read the novel of The Great Gastby and

elucidate how Francis Scott Fitzgerald's use of
literary devices conveys the main theme of his
masterpiece.