ORIGIN
AND GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL
Novel is an invented story
in prose, long enough to fill a complete book. According to Jane Austan, a
Novel is…
“ A work is which the
greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge
of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest
effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen
language”
The germ of
the novel lay in the mediaeval romance, a fantastic tale of love and adventure,
itself derived from the ballads and fragments of epic poems sung by the
wandering minstrel. In 1350 Boccaccio wrote a world famous collection of love
stories in prose, entitled the Decameron. Such short stories are
called in Italian Novelle. The term originally meant a ‘fresh story’
but gradually came signify a story in prose, as distinguished from a story in
verse, which continued to be called a romance. When prose became almost the
universal medium. The term ‘romance’ implied a story or series of stories of the
legendary past, of which Malory’s ‘
Morte d’ Arthur’ is a famous example. It is often used today to describe an
historical novel which is intentionally picturesque and exciting rather than
scholarly, and still more frequently for a piece of light fiction of an
emotional type, somewhat remote from the facts and probabilities of everyday
life.
The term novel is now applied to a great variety
of writing that has in common only the attribute of being extended works of
prose ‘fiction’. As an extended
narrative, the novel is distinguished from the work of middle length called the
‘novelle’, its magnitude permits a
greater variety of characters, greater complication of plot or plots, an ampler
development of social milieu.
The genuine
novel is found in the Eighteenth Century, which is called the modern novel. The
true novel implies…
“A work of fiction which
relates the story of a plain human life, under stress of emotion, which depends
for its interest not on incident of adventure, but on its truth to nature.”
Eventually in the Eighteenth Century English attained a
sudden maturity. All this threads of tendencies and techniques which so far
helped the growth of English fiction. These tendencies and techniques were
taken up by the writers of this Century in order to fashion the fascinating
fabric of the English novel. English
fiction awaited the development of English prose and the growth of English
reading public to give it character and purpose. By the beginning of the
Eighteenth Century these necessities were supplied and in consequence. In this
context Oliver Goldsmith, Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Henry Fielding all seem to
have seized upon the idea of reflecting life as it is, in the form of story and
to have developed it simultaneously which led English novel a sudden maturity.
Some of the
major factors that helped the rise of middle class…
Rise of the
Middle class:
The
literature was patronized formerly by the upper class. All the authors except
Langland and Bunyan used to write largely for the upper classes. Thus the number of readers was comparatively
small.
“ But in the Eighteenth
Century the spread of education and the appearance of newspapers and magazines
led to an immense increase in the number of readers; and at the same time the
middle class people assumed a foremost place in English life and history. These
new readers and this new powerful middle class had no classic tradition to
hamper them. They cared little for the opinions of Dr. Johnson and the famous
literary club; and, so far as they read fiction at all, they apparently took
little interest in the exaggerated romances of impossible heroes and the
picaresque stories of intrigues and villainy which had interested the upper
class. Some new type of literature was demanded and this new type must express
the new ideal of the Eighteenth Century namely, the value and the importance of
the individual life. So the novel was
born, expressing though in a different way, exactly the same ideals of
personality and of the dignity of common life which were later proclaimed in
the American and French Revolution, These tendencies were welcomed with
rejoicing by the poets of the Romantic revival. To tell men not about knights
or kings types of heroes, but about themselves in the guise of plain men and women,
about their own thoughts and motives and struggles, and results of actions upon
their own characters, -- this was the purpose of our first novelists. The
eagerness with which their chapters were read in England, and the rapidity with
which their work was copied abroad, show how powerfully the new discovery
appealed to readers everywhere.”
The Reading
Public and the Rise of the Novel:
The Novel’s
formal realism involved a many-sided break with the current literary tradition.
Among the many reasons that made it possible for that break to occur earlier
and more thoroughly in England than elsewhere, considerable importance must
certainly be attached to changes in the Eighteenth century reading public.
Leslie Stephen long ago suggested in his book English Literature and society in
the Eighteenth Century, that…
“The gradual extension of
the reading class affected the development of journalism, as prime example of
the effect of the changes in the audience for literature.”
Most
circulating libraries stocked all types of literature, but novels were widely
regarded at their main attraction: and there can be little doubt that they led
to the most notable increase in the reading public for fiction which occurred
during the century. They certainly provoked the greatest volume of contemporary
comment about the spread of reading to lower orders. These ‘slop-shops in
literature’ were to have debauched the minds of schoolboys, plough-boys,
servant women of the better sort, and even butcher and baker, cobbler, and tinker,
throughout the three kingdoms. The middle-class of London tradesman had only to
consult their own standards of form and content to be sure that what they wrote
would appeal to a large audience. This is probably very important effect of the
changed composition of the reading public and the new dominance of the
booksellers upon the rise of the novel.
The Rise of the Democratic Movement:
The rise of
the novel was the result of democratic movement in eighteenth-century England.
The romance like tragedy had been almost consistently aristocratic. But the
comprehensive of the novel, its free treatment of the characters and doings of
all sorts and conditions of men, and especially its sympathetic handling of
middle-class and low life, are unmistakable evidences of its democratic
quality. It is not by accident, therefore, that it appeared at a time when,
under Sir Robert Walpole’s firm rule, ‘this was settling down after a long period of military excitement’ and when,
with the consequent growth of commerce and industry the prestige of the old
feudal nobility was on the wane, and the middle classes were increasing
steadily in social and political power. As lord Morely has said of Pomela,
it was the…
“ Landmark of great social
no less than a great literary transition, when all England went mad with
enthusiasm over the trials, the virtues, the triumphs of a rustic lady’s maid.”
The wider
Scope of the Novel:
The form of the novel gives a far wider scope
than the drama for the treatment of motives, feelings and all the phenomena of
the inner life, it tended from the first to take a peculiar place as the
typical art-form of the introspective and analytical modern world. The novel
was the instrument in which the author could express himself thoroughly. As
compared with drama it was the most suitable medium for analysing the
sentiments and feelings which are lying in the inner recesses of mind. Samuel
Richardson was past master in exposing the deep-rooted sentiment of characters.
The Rise of
the Periodical Essay:
In the Eighteenth Century we see another
development in Coverley Papers of
Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. There is little plot in this essay-series
and only a rudimentary love- theme; but the allegorical fabric is gone, there
is much entertaining character sketching, and the spice of delicate humour. We
should note also that we have here the origin of the society and domestic
novel, for the newspapers deal with ordinary people and incidents.
The decline of the Drama:
In the
Eighteenth Century the drama was on the wane. So that time was ripe for the
maturity of the novel. The drama, which had helped to satisfy the natural human
desire for a story, was moribund. Thus something had to take its place. A
Licensing Act was passed in 1737as Fielding and others attacked Walpole
Government in their comedies. The novel proved to be one of the major species
of literature catering to the taste of the public.
Main Tendencies of Eighteenth Century Novel
Ethical Tendency:
Richardson
carried on the ethical traditions of Addison and Steele. In his own pragmatic
fashion, he undoubtedly did good work in the purification of Society and
manners. “ But his moralising is apt to sink overstrained and mawkish”
Regarding his morality, E. Albert remarks: “a professed teacher, he is the
embodiment of the religious eagerness of the rising puritan middle class. The
virtue, he advocates is typically utilitarian rather than fanatical and its
reward is material prosperity. Thus Pamela married he wicked master and
prospers in the world as a direct reward for her virtue.”
Love and the Novel:
During
Richardson’s lifetime, many important and complex changes in the ways that the
sexes oriented themselves to their roles were already far advanced. These
changes are of considerable intrinsic interest, since they herald the
establishment of what is substantially the concept of courtship, marriage and
feminine role that has obtained most widely in the last two centuries. The
reason for our interest in them here, however, is of more directly literary
nature: it derives from the fact that these social and psychological changes go
far to explain two of the major qualities posed by Pamela: its formal unity
and its peculiar combination of moral purity and impurity.
Dr.
Johnson, with the novella in mind, defined a ‘novel’ as a ‘small tale’
generally of love. When Pamela appeared it was called a ‘dilated novel’, because its subject was
essentially the single amorous episode which previous short novels has usually
been concerned with, but its treatment was on a scale closer to that of
romance.
Realism in Eighteenth-Century Novel:
Realism was
the main discovery of the Eighteenth-Century English novelist. English novel
was greatly influenced by the French writers because the latter was regarded as
the eventual change of tradition.
This, of
course, is very close to the position of the French Realists themselves, who
asserted that their novels tended to differ from the more flattering pictures
of humanity presented by many established ethical, Social and Literary codes.
It was merely because they were the products of a more dispassionate and
scientific scrutiny of life than had ever been attempted before. It is far from
clear that this ideal of scientific objectivity is desirable, in the first
sustained effort of the new genre to become critically aware of its aims and
methods. This is essentially an epistemological problem, and it, therefore,
seems likely that the nature of the novel’s realism.
Plot in the Eighteenth-Century Novel:
Defoe and
Richardson are the first great writers in our literature who did not take their
plots from mythology, history, and legend of previous literature. In this, they
differ from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton. For instance, who like
the writers of Greece and Rome habitually used traditional plots. Who did so,
in the last analysis, because they accepted the general premise of their times,
since Nature is essentially complete and unchanging, its records, whether
scriptural, legendary or historical, constitute a definite repertoire of human
experience.
The novel’s
use of non-traditional plots is an early and probably independent manifestation
of this emphasis. When Defoe, for example, began to write fiction as he took
little notice of the dominant critical theory of the day. Which still inclined
towards the use of traditional plots; instead, he merely allowed his narrative
order to flow spontaneously from his own sense of what his protagonists might
plausibly do next. In so doing Defoe initiated an important new tendency in
fiction. His total subordination of the plot to the pattern of the
autobiographical memoir is as defiant an assertion of the primacy of individual
experience in the novel.
Individualisation of character:
The concept
of realistic particularly in literature is itself somewhat to general to be
capable of concrete demonstration: for such demonstration to be possible the
relationship of realistic particularity to some specific aspects of narrative
technique must first be established. Two such aspects suggest themselves as of
especial importance in the novel characterisation and presentation of
background. The novel is surely distinguished from other genres and from
previous forms of fiction by the amount of attention and it habitually accords
both to the individualisation of its characters and to the detail presentation
of their environment.
Conclusion:
In the Eighteenth Century the English Novel
attained maturity. All the threads of tendencies and techniques, which so far
helped the growth of English Fiction, were taken up by the writers of this
century in order to fashion the fascinating fabric of the novel. Time and
circumstances were most responsible for the starting perfection of the novel.
Thanks to William Caxton who set up the first printing press in England, in
Westminster, in 1476, an army of printers came into existence, providing a
variety of books to suit the taste of ‘persons
of quality’ and of the ‘readers of
the meanest capacity’ as well. Lords and thinkers alike read the Authorised
Version of the Bible. All this trends brought a great change in the English
Society and in the art of writing by the beginning of the 18th
Century. A new reading public came into existence. The Puritan middle class and
even the Dissenting merchants and shopkeepers evinced interest in reading, and
dominated the book trade. Moreover, the Puritans’ religious zeal for right
conduct, and their attachment to moral standards and good manners exercised
considerable influence on the material and purpose of the novelists of this
period. Fiction took upon itself to
portray the virtues and vices of the average man, together with the
opportunities, which might reward his industry, goodness and benevolence.
Novelists, as well as other writers, became sentimental moralists preaching new
philosophy with democratic implications, which emphasized the innate virtue of
every man irrespective of his birth and breeding. ‘Realism and satire, a sense of fact, and the impulse to chasten and
reform---these characterise to a great extent the whole literature of the
period, whether its form be verse or prose, its inspiration Horace or the
Society for the Reformation of manners.’
To all these may be added two other facts. The new and increased reading public
made literature, especially novel writing, a paying profession. The same public
helped the coming into existence ‘the
noble simplicity of prose’. All these circumstances determined the
character and development of the 18th Century novel—with ‘its
judicious mingling of entertainment and instruction to its common milieu.
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