1. Definition of Novel

What Is the Novel?

The novel, as a genre, shares some characteristics with short story, for instance, plot and character. However, the novel does have something that short story cannot boast. That is why a novel is called a novel, not a long story.

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

1.1 By Etymology

Etymological study shows that the word "novel" comes from the Italian word“ novella” meaning “ a little new thing,” “ piece of news,” “chitchat,” “tale,” and that the word “ novel ” is related to the French word meaning "new. In fact, as an English word, the word "novel" still keeps the meaning of new, unusual, being the first of its kind, as in the phrase “a novel idea.” The English word “novel” came to mean a literary genre in the 16th century while in the Chinese language the term xiaoshuo was used to refer to a literary genre in the first century and what it meant was "tall tales,” “gossip. In many European languages, the word“ roman” is used for what we take to be the novel. Borrowed into English, "roman" is transformed into “romance,” an account of a legendary figure or happening.

From its etymology, we draw the following conclusions:

First, the novel is a new genre or form. It is new because it greatly differs from those already established, namely, poetry, drama and ballad. A poem is originally a rhymed structure while a novel is not rhymed, that is, a novel is in prose form. A drama is a show or performance intended for viewing or watching while a novel is a telling or narration intended for reading. A ballad is a musical piece for singing or while a novel is not. So a novel can be tentative defined as a prose narrative.

Second, the content of a novel is of a fictitious nature. A novel tells about something legendary and “novel” (“unfamiliar,” thus may not be established as truth ). Fictionality is essential to the novel, and indeed to all literary works

Third, the purpose or first purpose of a novel is to entertain. In the first place people read novels not to improve the mind, but to make it relax as when people listen to tall tales or gossip. Of course, as a work of a mature genre, a novel is highly organized and artful, unlike gossip.

By etymological study of the word “novel,” have come to the conclusion that a novel is a fictional prose narrative for entertainment. Obviously, such a definition is too broad. As it tends to hold all, it leaks much.

1.2 By Distinction

To define is to draw the limits between things. Therefore, a comparison is needed here, brief as it will be, to isolate the novel from its fellow genres. What we call a novel is virtually a book in itself while a poem, no matter how long it is, usually is not printed as a book, epics like Iliad and Odyssey being exceptions. E. Allan Poe once suggested that a short story should be of the length that it could be read at one sitting without causing tiredness. Today s short story still follows the norm. Nobody can boast or even attempt to finish reading a novel in such a short time. “Lengthiness” is one of the characteristics of the novel. But “lengthiness” is not merely a matter of length. While a short story concentrates on one event or a few closely related events, a novel is capable of relating a conglomerate of events that are closely or remotely connected, but relevant at all. Therefore, the virtual difference between the novel and the other genres of literature is thoroughness and profundity.

Poems may contain elements also found in the novel, for instance, those vignettes in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and some poems may contain Frost's “Mending Wall” Dramas may be written in verse and they may use poems as one of their ingredients. However, it is the novel that is the most open to all the other genres. In novels, one finds elements from poetry, drama, and even film as its integrated parts. The novel as a genre has a greater adaptability and it can utilize elements of other genres without causing much damage to its own effect, but enhancing its attraction. Obviously, the novel is the least restricted by convention and form.

By comparing briefly the novel with other genres, we come to the point that the novel is the most inclusive and flexible form of literature.

1.3 By Analysis and Synthesis

Many celebrities, most of them being novelists themselves, have commented on the novel as a genre and their comments are most inspiring. E.M. Forster commented in his reputed Aspects of the Novel, “Yes — oh, dear, yes — the novel tells a story.” By emphasizing the “storyness” of the novel, Forster means that a novel is made because of its content or subject matter. Without a story, a novel is impossible. But the novel and the story are not the same thing. Gore Vidal writes in Myra Breckinridge, “The novel being dead, there is no point in writing made-up stories.” Merely telling stories is no novel. The novel is art and are means style.

Novels tell stories of any kinds, but some kinds are important enough as to be mentioned by famous novelists. Stendhal echoes Shakespeare in saying “a novel is a mirror walking along a main road.” ( Le Rouge et le Noir, ch.49) In his opinion, a novel tells stories from real life, as attested by his own writings. His compatriot Edmond de Goncourt was more sophisticated and straightforward in saying that historians tell the story of the past but novelists tell the story of the present. “The story of the present” is not only what is happening now but also what happened that is related to or bears on the present. Or, rather, it is the novelist who renders the past meaningful to the present. The stories the historians tell are supposed to be real happenings while the stories the novelists tell may or may not be real happenings. And even when it is a real happening, the novelist has to modify it to make it art rather than history.

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. Otherwise, he would reject the novel and question the appropriateness of writing and reading lies and fantasies. Anthony Powell’s remark is worth study: " People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. " (A Dance to the Music of Time: Hearing Secret Harmonies, ch. 3) Biographies and memoirs are supposed to be matter-of-fact records of what have happened, but they lie because of incompleteness. Novels, though mainly of invented materials, tell truths, because they are complete in a different and higher sense. So the faithfulness of a novel is not to the details of real life, but to the meaning or essence of life. Perhaps that is why the word" poetics, which is derived from poetry, is used for any literary theories including theories of the novel. Because of its thoroughness and profundity, a good novel does not only present the essence of life, it can be complete in both the material and spiritual senses. Virginia Woolf confirms us, "The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire.” (The Captain’s Death Bed. “Reading”

As for the reason why there are novelists writing novels, John Fowles's answer is right to the point: "There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common — a need to create an alternative world." ( The Sunday Times Magazine, 2 Oct, 1977) Novelists have the purpose of changing things ( people's minds), whether they admit it or not. Works by novelists who are art-for-art's-sake artists and who claim to be merely breadwinners for their families have the potential of affecting readers. Readers, by reading whatever novels, are willingly open to anything new to their minds. In another word, they want to be changed. So the purpose or function of the novel is to change the world by changing the reader's mind.

To change the reader's mind, the novel has to be true enough and powerful enough. But the first thing is to hold the reader's attention. If the reader refuses to continue reading it, the novel, however wonderful, cannot work wonders. This is especially true when Henry James says, “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting, ( “The Art of Fiction") for he is considered by many as the author of many uninteresting novels.

The novel, though much younger than drama, became so popular and powerful that dramatists could not ignore its presence. Kenneth Tynnan seems to be belittling the novel by the remark: "A novel is a static thing that one moves through, a play is dynamic thing that moves past one (Curtains) But, an observant reader will be able to discover an essential quality of the novel in this very praise of drama. A novel is a static thing the reader moves through. The reader of the novel is more active than the viewer of drama. Or, a novel provides more room for the reader's imagination and interpretation while a drama, when being performed on the stage, presents its audience with something more definite. To achieve its supposed effect, a novel needs the reader's participation more than a drama does.

By now, it might not be imprudent to give a definition of the novel since we have examined the etymology of the word "novel, made a brief comparison between what is thought to be the novel and other literary genres, and consulted what has been said about the novel by men of letters. Based on the study above, a novel is a highly stylized prose account fictional reality in the form of story with profundity for the purpose of changing the reader's mind by the aid of the reader's active involvement while providing entertainment and superior truth of life.

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.

2. Kinds of the Novel

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

2.1 By Length

The commonest way to classify novels is by length. This method is especially welcomed by ordinary readers and publishers, since it is the easiest to do and directly related to the amount of time and money to tackle the novels. In terms of length, novels fall into the following categories.

2.1.1 Full-length Novel

Without modification, the word “novel” refers to the full-length novel. But nobody has been able to propose an all-accepted length for the novel and people seem to have no need for such a standard. The standard exists only in acquiescence and mutual confidence. E.M. Forster, a British novelist who wrote the book Aspect of the Novel, could not let go the aspect needed to make a work a novel at all. But a novel of about 50,000 words is not a full-length novel in our mind. Conveniently, a full-length novel, printed, comprises a book of considerable thickness. More importantly, full-length should indicate full development.

2.1.2 Short Novel

Mainly (but not merely) a description of size, the term “short novel” refers to a narrative midway in length between a short story and a novel. Generally a short novel, like a short story, centers on just one or two characters, but unlike a short story, it has room to reveal them in greater fullness and depth, sometimes taking in a longer span of times. Leo Tolstoi’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” is a short novel. 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

2.1.3 Trilogy

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. Considerable trilogies include 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), James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan”(Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, and Judgment Day) and Theodore Dreiser’s three novels about the businessman Frank Cowperwood called the “ Trilogy of Desire” ( The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic).

2.1.4 Tetralogy

A sequence of four novels is usually caleed a tetralogy, such as Ford Maddox Ford’s novels about a hero named Tietjens in series called “Parade’s End” (Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up, and The Last Post), although Lawrence Durrell preferred to call his series of four novels “The Alexandria Quartet” (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea).

2.2 By Subject Matter

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 the following categories.

2.2.1 Picaresque Novel

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. When the novel as a genre made its appearance, the social environment and people’s mentality were such that they loved to hear something new or unfamiliar from remote areas and from other social groups besides their own. Naturally, picaresque novel is an early type of the novel. It is about a rogue seeking adventures on the highways and living by his wits and duping the straight citizenry. Novels telling stories of this kind are capable of light-heartedness and farcical humor. The name comes from Spanish “picaro ,” meaning “rascal” or “rogue.” Picaresque novel is noted for its loose, flexible and open-ended structure. The classic picaresque novel is anonymous Spanish Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), imitated by many English writers, among them Henry Fielding in his story of a London thief and racketeer, The Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild (1743). When the novel matured in the 19th century, the picaresque element disappeared, though other kinds of episodic form persisted. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn owes something to the tradition. Like early picaresque novels, it is told in a series of episodes rather than in one all-unifying plot and is narrated in the first person by a hero at odds with respectable society. In Twain’s novel, however the traveling swindlers who claim to be a duke and a dauphin are much more typical rogues of picaresque fiction than Huck himself, an honest innocent. Later, novels about a character journeying through life are also referred to as picaresque novels. One example would be Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. However, journeying through life often necessitates journeying through places. So it metaphorically resembles the wanderings of a picaresque.

2.2.2 Gothic Novel

Gothic novel emphasizes the grotesque, mysterious, 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. This novel is filled with scenes of terror and gloom in a medieval setting. Popular in the 18th century, Gothic novel is an ancestor of the modern mystery story, fantasy, and science fiction. 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. Think of Jane Eyre. Rochester is a Gothic hero. Another example is Rebecca.

2.3.2 Bildungsroman

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), or the apprenticeship novel after its classic example, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796) by Johann Volfgang von Goethe. It is a novel about a young person’s growing-up. Examples would be Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe, Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, and Dickens’s Great Expectations. Bildungsroman is frequently autobiograpgical.

2.2.4 Kunstlerroman

When an apprenticeship novel deals with the development of an artist or writer, it is called a Kunstlerroman. “Kunstler,” also a German word, means “artist.” It is a novel about the artist or writer coming of age, or in conflict with society. His struggles from childhood to maturity are both against an inhospitable environment and with himself toward an understanding f his creative mission. Examples would be James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Maugham’s The Moon and the Sixpence. Dorris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook tells hoe Anna has finally overcome a writer’s block and has come to understand her role as an artist.

2.2.5 Psychological Novel

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. Examples would be Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, The Brothers Karamazov, and all stream-of-consciousness novels, such as Mrs. Dalloway and The Red Badge of Courage, told through the mental wanderings of single character. In a sense, the psychological story is as old as the first drama, tale, or ballad, such as Hamlet and most of the Shakespeare’s better plays. The term was first applied to a group of novelists in the middle of the 19th century, a group of which Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot and George Meredith were the chief writer. 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.

2.2.6 Sociological Novel

Sociological novels, also called thesis novels, treat social, political or religious problems with didactic and sometimes radical purpose. Examples would be John Steinbeck’s The Grape of Wrath and Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Such novels are set out to call attention to certain social problems and sometimes offer solutions. Utopian and dystopian visions in fictional form might be included in this category.

2.2.7 Proletariat Novel

Proletariat novels focus on the working classes, almost invariably presenting their miseries and struggles. Examples are Jack London’s Iron Heel and Mrs. Gaskell’s Mary Barton.

2.2.8 Novels of the Soil

Novels of the Soil concentrate on country life, and usually more on its hardship than on its pleasures. Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth belongs to Novels of the Soil.

2.2.9 Romance

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. The roman of the Middle Ages in Europe was a chivalric and romantic narrative. It was lengthened into the roman d’aventure, or romance of love and adventure, from which the modern romance derives. 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, extravagance, and naivete. 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.

2.3 By Technique

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

2.3.1 Epistolary Novel

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. Pride and Prejudice (1813), a novel of social manners, may be viewed as an epistolary novel in that it contains 16 letters which greatly contribute to the plot development and make the novel distinct from others.

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. Therefore the novelist does not have to worry much about arousing and holding the reader's attention. Letters, especially those to intimate friends and relatives, are windows to the innermost soul. Therefore, the novelist does not have to devise other ways to reveal the characters' minds. Since letters may be unreliable sometimes and may be delayed or lost on the way, it is quite easy to create suspenses and misunderstandings. Its disadvantages are its narrow scope. Only those who are well educated at least literate and quite expressive are suitable to main characters of an epistolary novel. The main characters must have good reasons to write letters frequently in order to keep the novel going. By adopting this form, the novelist has to make sure that the letters should make a whole story instead of piled-up fragments.

2.3.2 The Novel of Ideas

Another distinctive modern type is the "novel of ideas." The ideas may be moral, political or philosophical. Examples would be Huxley's Brave New World, Sartre's Age of Reason, and Orwell's 1984. By attempting such novels, the novelist takes the risk that either his idea is not "novel" or his novel is merely ideas. Sometimes the novels of ideas fail to achieve the aesthetic effect and have to remain lengthy pamphlets.

2.3.3 Roman a Clef

Literally,“ roman a clef” means “ novel with a key.” In the novel the characters stand for actual people and can be recognized as such by the initiated. One example is Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, which is based on her friend and novelist Victoria Sackwille-West. Thomas Love Peacock makes innuendoes at the poets of the day in his novel Nightmare Abbey: Scythrop is a disguised Shelley, Mr. Flosky is a satirical portrait of Coleridge, and Mr. Cypress represents Byron. James Joyce's Finnegans Wake may be the longest roman a clef ever written.

2. 3. 4 The New Novel

In the1950sthe“ new novel” developed, in reaction to the novels of the kinds we have been talking about Writers of the new novel (such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon) argue that the traditional novel is utterly false, for it presents characters( whereas people are not psychologically consistent creatures, but a complex series of appearances).plots( whereas plots do not exist in nature ), and it assumes that there is a connection between people and the objects of the world they move in( a naive assumption). 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. The new novel is also named “antinovel,” (metafiction,” or “nouveau roman” in French.

2.3.5 Nonfictional Novel

Recently even the veil of fiction has been removed, and a new form the "non-fiction novel,” has come into vogue. 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.

2. 3. 6 The Historical Novel

It is a familiar kind of fiction that claims a basis in fact, a detailed reconstruction of life in another time, perhaps in another place. In some historical novels the author attempts a faithful picture of daily life in another era, as does Robert Graves in I, Claudius(1934), a novel of patrician Rome. More often history is a backdrop for an exciting story of love patrician heroic adventure. The latter is a kind of literary entertainment made popular by Sir Walter Scott in his series of novels beginning with Waverley (1814) In America, history, more or less freely adapted, has been the province of novelists, from Gore Vidal's recent Burr to as far back as James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy (the masquerading hero is revealed in the end to be George Washington). Wholly or partly realistic in approach, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter( set in Puritan Boston), Herman Melville's Moby Dick( set in the heyday of Yankee whalers ), and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage( set in the battlefields of the Civil War)are historical novels in that their authors lived considerably later than the scenes and events that they depicted - and strove for truthfulness, by imaginative means.

It is no wonder that the categories overlap, for the standards applied are mutually inclusive instead of mutually exclusive. As an artistic reflection of life that is complex, novels are even more complex and refuse to be neatly diagrammed, as shown by literary history. War and Peace is not only a historical novel but also a Bildungsroman, a novel of ideas, a psychological novel, and in a minor way, a roman a clef. Containing realistic and romantic elements, Jane Eyre is both Gothic and autobiographical. It is Bildungsroman. Pride and Prejudice is a novel of social manners and epistolary a novel. In the meantime it is also a Bildungsroman because it is about Elizabeth's transition from girlhood to wifehood. She undergoes critical moments in her maturation.

3. Early Development of the Novel

The novel constitutes the third stage in the development of imaginative fiction, following the epic and the romance. In its development, the novel absorbed much from the epic and the romance, but could not displace the two ancient forms. The word “ novel”( from the Latin word“ novellus, meaning "new") appears to have been applied during the early Renaissance(14th century to 17th century) to any new story. The term "novella" was applied by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio to the short, anecdotal prose narratives in his Decameron(1348-1353). When his tales were translated the term “novel” itself was also translated into the English language.

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.

The novel grows out of the story or tale. Many tales that subsequently became part of the European literary tradition originated in Egypt. It seems clear that around 1200 BC Egyptians were already writing fictions that might be described as novels even by the modern standard. For example, The Princess of Backstaw and The Predestined Prince.

In the Classical times many fiction narratives were written and some of them were important in the development of the novel, for they contain the rudiments of the novel as we understand them today. Examples are Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass ( 2nd century AD) and Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century AD).

In India the novel probably can be said to have a precursor in the Dasakumaracarita (“ Tales of Ten Princes”) a prose romance by Dandin, a Sanskrit writer of the late 6th century AD.

Japan produced what many scholars regard as the first real novel, The Tale of Genji (11th century; translated 1935). Its author Baroness Murasaki Shikibu wrote in this long story of court life about the adventures of a Japanese Don Juan at the imperial court. More importantly, the author did some analysis of the character and study of psychology in love, thus giving the work the depth similar to that in the modern novel.

About in the period of 14th century to 16th century, both in the Arab world and in Italy there was a vogue for collections of short tales. There were two world-famous collections, among many others: one is The Thousand and One Nights and the other is Boccaccio's Decameron. These stories are very important because they were written in prose, and in them are found methods of narration and creation as well as development of character that herald the modern novel.

In the 14th century Spain took the lead in developing the form of the novel. At the very beginning of the 14th century there appeared a novel entitled El Caballero Cifar, followed by another novel in several sequels entitled Amadis de Gaula. Then in the early 17th century Cervantes wrote what is considered the first great novel of the western world, Don Quixote dela Mancha. It recounts the adventures of a country gentleman driven mad by reading chivalric romances, which he accepts as factual. Don Quixote de la Mancha made it apparent that the overriding moral purpose of this form is to teach individual human beings what is possible to specific men and women living in specific societies. This emphasis on the moral purpose was to be reflected in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

In the 16th century France contributed two works to the genre of the novel: Gargantua and Pantague by Rabelais. Both can be described as novels of fantasy or mythopoeic. They are forerunners to Gulliver's Travels, Candide and Zarathustra in terms of treatment of subject matter. The advent of the present-day science fiction can also be detected in these novels.

The novel was still in its infancy in England by the end of the 16th century. In 1713 Congreve published his writing Incongita: or, Love and Duty Reconciled. He called his work a novel and presented in his preface a definition of the genre. He pointed out the relation between the romance and the novel and went on to emphasize the closer relation the novel enjoys with real life. In 1713 Defoe's Robinson Crusoe came out, marking the maturation of the genre.

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.