PART 2

教师进入正文讲解:

Let students read the first 2 paragraphs and note some key words or phrases that contribute to the definition of poetry.

Q1: How many approaches can be used to classify novels? What are they?

A1: A definition of the novel can be reached by three approaches. They are by etymological study, by distinguishing between what we call the novel and what we think is not, and by synthesizing previous definitions

Q2: What kind of novel can be regarded as a fictional prose narrative for entertainment?

A2:

First, the novel is a new genre or form.

Second, the content of a novel is of a fictitious nature.

Third, the purpose or first purpose of a novel is to entertain.

Let students read the “By Distinction” part and conclude the main idea of this part.

Q3: How can we tell novels apart from other genres?

A3:

1. “Lengthiness” is one of the characteristics of the novel.

2. The virtual difference between the novel and the other genres of literature is thoroughness and profundity.

3. The novel as a genre has a greater adaptability

4. The novel is the most inclusive and flexible form of literature.

Let students read the “By Analysis and Synthesis” part, and pick out the key words and sentences.

Q4: What are the other features of the novel?

1. Novels tell stories of any kinds.

2. Novels tell made-up stories, but they tell truth. Even when he is fully aware that what he is reading are make-believes, the reader has to suppose that the authors tell truths.

3. The novel, though much younger than drama, became so popular and powerful that dramatists could not ignore its presence.

教师对该部分总结

Apparently, the definition of the novel above is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive one. By nature, the definition is subject to change in the future, once a new specimen of writing is discovered to be a member of the novel family. However, it remains good so far. Any works that meet the description can be justifiably called novels while those that partially meet the description can be called novels with varied degrees of reservation or modification.

导入：

Once established and popular, the genre novel has been used by people of various talents and interests, therefore, it has been enriched and re-enriched and finally become a sophisticated body of works of art. It is almost impossible to classify novels by a single standard.

教师进入Kind of the Novel讲解:

Q5: What are the three standards to tell the kinds of novel?

A: The standards commonly used are length, subject matter, setting, and technique.

Q6: What is the difference between full-length novel and short novel?

A: Conveniently, a full-length novel, printed, comprises a book of considerable thickness. More importantly, full-length should indicate full development.

Sometimes a short novel is also called a novelette (a term formerly much used by magazines that featured long fiction), or a novella; but these names are out of fashion

Q7: Have you ever heard of “三部曲” in Chinese class? Similarly, foreign novels also include “Trilogy”. Who can name any trilogy according to your knowledge?

A: Twilight Trilogy (Twilight, Twilight Sage and New Moon.)

Since we have talked about trilogy, there must be Tetralogy (四部曲)

Q8: What is Tetralogy? Do you know any famous tetralogy?

A: A trilogy is a group of three novels in a sequence. To be thoroughly told, a complex story with many scenes and many characters sometimes extends beyond the covers of a single novel.

Arnold Bennett’s “The Clayhanger Family” (Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways and These Twain), John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. (consisting of The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money)

教师总结：A more commonly used standard to classify novels is by their subject matters. Since subject matters are an element of the novel, this standard is more relevant, and more scientific, so to speak. In terms of subject matter, novels fall into many different categories.

Q9: What is picaresque novel? Recall all the novels you have read, which one can be regarded in this category?

A: The name comes from Spanish “picaro ,” meaning “rascal” or “rogue.” Picaresque novel is noted for its loose, flexible and open-ended structure. The first authors of novels wrote to entertain people more than to inspire and instruct them, and the first readers of novels wanted to be amused more than to be taught something serious about the world.

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can be a picaresque novel.

The first impression of medieval is mysterious, and the novel which is set in medieval is also the similar feature. Now let’s learn Gothic Novel.

Q10: What is the main character of gothic novel apart from mysterious?

A: Gothic novel emphasizes the grotesque, and desolate. Gothic, originally in the sense “medieval, not classical,” was applied by Horace Walpole to his novel The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story, published in 1765. The typical Gothic novel (the story always took place in the past), tantalizing plot of revenge and terrifying scenes and ending. Readers are to find deserted castles on a lonely bleak mountain top or deep in an isolated valley or on an island nobody can locate on the map or in the mind. Supernatural things become natural here. The Good might or might not be rewarded in the end. The main character is always a woman usually doomed in one way or another. In the castle there is an outrageous secret. The male is usually dark, gloomy. It is a woman’s adventure story. The atmosphere, much like that in a Gothic church, is depressing.

Q11: Other two categories of novel are related to German, what are they? What do they mean?

A10: From the 19th century on, one of the novel forms popular especially in Germany had been the so-called “Bildungsroman” (the German “bulidung” meaning “education). The other one is Kunstlerroman. When an apprenticeship novel deals with the development of an artist or writer, it is called a. “Kunstler,” also a German word, means “artist.” It is a novel about the artist or writer coming of age, or in conflict with society.

Q12: How does the Psychological novel develop?

A: Novels that dwell on a complex psychological development and present much of the narration through the inner workings of the character’s mind belong to the psychological novel.

Thackeray and Dickens were interested enough in motives and mental stated to be placed into this group. Hardy and Conrad were also interested in picturing the interior motives and psychological life of his characters. In the 20th century, with the advance of psychology as a science, the term has come into popular use. Freudianism particularly gave impetus to this type of the novel.

Q13: How much do you know Romance? What is Romance novel?

The word “romance” comes from Old French, meaning “something written in the popular language,” i.e., a Roman language, one of the languages belongs to the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Romances were originally written in verse, but gradually they took the form of prose and thus fell into the category of the novel. Romances tell about characters who live in a courtly world remote from everyday life of the common people. They usually contain elements of fantasy, improbability, and extravagance. They also contain elements of love, adventure, the marvelous and the “mystic.” Their focus is on the heroic or spectacular achievement, chivalry, gallant love, etc. romances are invariably for entertainment, being virtually incapable of providing new or profound insights into life or human nature.

In terms of setting and technique, novels fall into several categories.

Q14: Which style is the Epistolary novel?

A: An epistolary novel consists of the letters the characters write to each other. What other novelists do through narration the author of an epistolary novel has to do solely or mainly through letter. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) are typical of this kind. This kind of novel demands more talent. It has particular advantages and disadvantages. Letters, especially those addressed to others, constitute an irresistible attraction to the reader.

Q15: In the1950s the “new novel” developed, and then what exactly is the new novel? In which part it is new?

A: The new novels see the natural world as totally irrelevant to human beings. Instead of presenting a story of coherent characters acting in a context, the new novel offers a sort of dream-like series of perceptions; the identities of the perceivers and the chronology are usually unclear, and of course, the story has no conclusion.

Q16：Usually, we admit novels are fictional stories, however, recently even the veil of fiction has been removed, and a new form the "non-fiction novel,” has come into vogue. What is nonfictional novel?

A: The term apparently was coined by Truman Capote to describe In Cold Blood, his account of a multiple murder committed in Kansas in 1959. The details are all true, but the book is written with a novelist's sense of irony and of symbolic details; in short, it is history written by a novelist- but this form is not to be confused with the “historical novel,” which, for its usual emphasis on plot and on the exotic, is a kind of romance. Another example of the nonfiction novel is Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, describing the anti-Vietnam War march of 1967 and subsequent related events, in which Mailer writes of himself in the third person, an attempt to see it historically. Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon and Green Hills of Africa are also nonfictional novels.

教师进入Early Development of the Novel讲解

The absolute origins of the novel as a genre are obscure. But throughout the ancient world fiction narratives were composed in prose, and all the works have been indiscriminately called novels. Though the novel first appeared in the west, both western and eastern civilizations had contributed to its birth.

Q17: In which country does the novel flourish?

A: The novel began to flourish in America in the 19th century. Though overshadowed by the English novel at the beginning, the new nation produced novelists of its own merit. James Fenimore Cooper was the first to gain international recognition by his voluminous Leatherstocking series of novels. Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne were among the early novelists in American literary tradition.