Novel (literature)

Origins of the novel: Approaches historical and literary

Of a language to a kind

Any attempt at satisfactory definition of the novel is closely related to the identification of its origins. Thus, many are the theorists of the novel who sought to support their generic theories on genetic theories. For this reason a satisfactory entry to try to define the term of novel can be in the origin even this mot. This term is originally used to indicate a language used with the Moyen-âge, the Romance Langue, resulting from the language used in the north of France, the Langue of oil, which will prevail on the language of oc of the south of France. This language, born from the progressive evolution of the Latin , replaces this last in the use and the oral practices of the north of the France.

Romanus (Latin) > romanice (vulgar Latin) > romanz or Romance (former French). The first writings hitoric appeared for the period of antiquity, the Eneide and the Odyssé is some examples. Then, with the Middle Ages, the use of Latin is restricted with the written texts while the oral communications are done in Romance language. Latin being known only of one small minority of the population, primarily made up of monk and well-read men, it is then necessary to transcribe or write in Romance language certain texts in order to make them available to a larger audience. The “Romance” term is thus applied to all the texts written in Romance language to this end, that they are in Prose or Towards, that they are narrative or not. The novels are opposed then to the texts written in Latin, in particular the official and crowned texts. The expression “to put in novel”, appeared towards 1150, thus means “to translate into vulgar language”. To indicate the texts which belong to the narrative kind, the terms estoire and tale are generally used. Thus, Chrétien of Troyes writes it: “ore will begin estoire ”.

In the beginning reserved for the translation of texts hagiographic, this vulgar language - the novel - is quickly used by the narrative literature. The term starts to gradually indicate a literary kind with whole share. Thus, in Lancelot or the Knight of the cart , Chrétien of Troyes writes it: “since my Champagne lady wants that I undertake a novel, I will undertake it very readily”. The term then starts to approach its modern direction, that of fictitious account with episodes centered around one or several characters.

After having pointed out the semantic evolution of the “Romance” term, it is necessary for us now to be interested in the literary kind that this term recovers. Until, the Chanson de geste and lyric poetry dominate the landscape literary and narrative but, gradually, a new kind makes its appearance: the novel. Although innovator and original, it however draws many reasons in the literary kinds which preceded it.

Sources of the medieval novel

Lyric poetry

The literary rupture started by the appearance of the new kind of the lyric Poésie does not have therefore masking a broad continuity in the topics and the reasons evoked by the novel. He inherits initially the stylized characters of lyric poetry: the lady is there a married woman of condition higher than that of her applicant; the vassal man is obeying the lady, it is timid and borrowed in front of her and the losengiers is a cheating character, a traitor in power. He also takes again the topic of the fine amor , this secret love, crowned in which the woman is divinisée, sacrilized. He also inherits the Reverdie . The Reverdie is a cyclic return to the spring which involves the contemplation of the lady by the lover like his made eulogistic portrait of associations between the beauty of nature and that of the woman.

However, the novelist does not take again these topics with identical, very often it reactualizes them, modifies them and dramatizes them. But especially, it substitutes a new figure for that of the poet in love. The modus operandi of the seduction evolves/moves: the woman does not allure herself any more by words and songs but by actions. The character of the Poète is replaced by the knight inherited the chansons de geste.

The chanson de geste

The hero of the Chanson de geste holds his features of the hero epic. He is valiant, brave, he can handle the weapons, he combines the frankness with honesty and generosity. Over all, it can preserve its honor. Among the many reasons inherited the chanson de geste, let us note that of the description of the weapons of the knight, his assistants or its enemies, that of the combat and the battles which are followed from there or even those of the ambushes, continuations and other traps which mark out the way of the hero. One also finds the scenes of embassy expensive to the chanson de geste, the scenes of council between a lord and his barons or the funeral regret (lamentations on a hero, a lost companion) and the prayer of the greatest danger.

However, the novel moves away on several points from the chanson de geste: ; by its form first of all: The chanson de geste is a succession of assonancées leashes psalmodiées by jugglers accompanied by hurdy-gurdy. The novel is well written in worms but those are organized in verses of octosyllabic with rhymes punts; ; by the audience then: The chanson de geste is listened by men installed in the large part of the castle whereas the novel is listened in the room of the ladies by more refined and more cultivated people; ; the space of the diégèse is restricted: One passes from the immense battle fields to orchards or fields, even to small parts or locus amoenus (= intimate and paradisiac place where reign the lady).

The topics and the reasons which one can meet in the novel are not born thus ab nihilo , the new kind is inspired largely by those which preceded it while carrying out broad modifications and innovations.

Three matters

Beyond the topics and exploited reasons, the subjects covered by the novel are characterized by their originality and their diversity. It is however possible to gather them in three great subjects (known as matters):

the Matter of Rome, or antique inspired the Novel of Thèbes , the Novel of Enéas , the Novel of Troy and the Novel of Alexandria ;
the Matter of France, accounts of wars and military prowesses of the Francs;
the Matter of the Brittany, most fertile, inspired all the novels known as “arthuriens”.

The matter of Brittany develops at the court of Henri II Plantagenêt and his wife Aliénor of Aquitaine like at the court of the girl of Aliénor, Marie de France, in Champagne. The matter of Brittany is impregnated traditions and Celtic legends transmitted orally by the Breton and Welsh storytellers. Although many inaccuracies remain on its existence, Chrétien of Troyes seems the author most representative and more innovating of this matter of Brittany. Its writing is characterized in particular by an special attention paid to the effects of structure (various mirrors, parallels, echoes, correspondences between characters or episodes, etc). It also innovates by the turn which it gives to the adventures its heroes. It decorates them events unforeseen and surprising which often seem the signs of the destiny of the knight. Moreover, it closely binds these adventures to the concept of search. This one can have as an aim a missing character, a love, an identity, a glory or a spiritual end. These searches take seat in a romantic universe which combines supernatural and marvellous elements for purposes of reality.

The novel in prose with

Before, few texts were written in prose. They were primarily legal texts. This is why, in mentalities of the time, the texts in prose could easily be associated with a guarantee with veracity. But at the end of the 12th century and at the beginning of, probably in order to increase the credibility of the told adventures and in order to reduce the artificiality related to versification, prose takes more and more importance in the narrative texts. This passage to prose also allows the development of the individual reading while hitherto the collective reading was privileged.

These novels in prose take as a starting point the model of the Passion of Christ and massively refer to the myth holy Graal (the Saint Chalice which would have been used by the Christ at the time of the Cène).

Realistic novels

These novels appear jointly with the development of the middle-class and a spirit gradually more materialist. The redécouverte of the texts of Aristote accompanies this reinforcement by rationalism to the detriment by a share of spirituality and the marvellous one. The Romance of the Rose and Jehan and Blonde illustrate this new orientation of the kind. The authors of these novels choose to remain within the limits of probable and reject the marvellous arthurien. The geography of the places becomes increasingly familiar with the readers, the fictitious characters meet there historical characters (real) and the selected heroes come increasingly from modest milieus and are less and less legendary. However, this kind is marked by a strong paradox: whereas prose seems to be the form most adapted to transcribe reality with credibility and whereas the majority of the novels from now on are written in prose, these realistic novels continue to be written in worms (octosyllabic verses). Consequence or not of this paradox, they will disappear gradually in front of success growing from the novels in prose.

Origins of the novel: Psychoanalytical approach

The novel is undoubtedly the place of largest secrecies, that which one cannot acknowledge and which Freud called the family romance of the neurotics. About what is it? Marthe Robert - retains that the young child passes by two types of scenarios: that of the found child who thinks born of a royal family, then that of the Bastard one which relegates the father in a kingdom of imagination (moves away it, gets rid some…). These two attitudes are found in the romantic kind and, for Marthe Robert, define it as tel. the novel does not have determined fixed forms but obliged contents, that to give an account of the " family romance of the enfance". The tale stops with the threshold of the marital room, the characters there are anonymous, and appear on side a malicious, powerful and old, and other oppressed weak and young people. The true novel is born with the arrival from the bastard one, when, without giving up its visions of paradise, the kind wakes up with the requirements of reality œdipienne. Don Quichotte and Robinson Crusöé emerge then. Don Quichotte claims to be generated itself, it is impassioned for the fictitious families (books of knighthoods) acts as a Found Child (thinks that all is owe him because it makes great noise of his satisfying), but the world which Cervantès offers to him makes fun of him and corrects it.

One will note in the passing which it is extremely probable that Cervantès was Jewish marrane and thus constrained under the Enquiry to hide its identity " what leads the novelist to militate not exactly for its convictions, but to see clearly while remaining in the doubt as for the validity of its own intellectual choices. "

Robinson Crusoé, as for him, breaks once for all with his/her parents whom he disavows, thus falling down to the state préœdipien, but for the first time in a novel, the ground of the dream must be cleared using tools, of calculations, experiment… After one long period of training (26 years) the arrival of Friday makes of him a father and soon the owner of an island from which it draws from enormous profits. After these novels of the incipient middle-class, the kind will evolve/move in the Napoleonean historical context: The Father of the guilty people (of the regicide) which manufacture a family of kings and the légitimise by marrying a heiress of legal empire. The dream of the bastard ones - the social rise by the women - will become possible. Balzac will say equal statesmen, it will create a Human Comedy which must enable him to grow rich and to be anoblir, to gain claims to fame in the life. And yet Balzac, which is not that which its characters dream to be, remains the Child Found very powerful who forsakes the ridiculous goods of the row and the money to be made the equal one of the Creator. Refusing realism, Flaubert will express on another mode his desire of any power, he dreams of a beautiful novel in his only formal assemblies as in addition he rejects the silly thing of the flesh - to see the scene of the hackney carriage in Mrs. Bovary - and the chances of the birth (primitive scene). Thus he dreams at the same time man and woman (he is Emma), abolishing sexual differentiation and recomposing the lost totality of the Paradise. But the Bastard one has also its place in the imaginary one of Flaubert who does not cease in spite of his formal ideas observing reality in a way more but scrupulous so that Marthe Robert known as of his art that " If the Child Found reign incontestably on the sentence, the Bastard one on his side assumes the responsibility for the plans,… " and that the " need for all to know thoroughly " its requirement for formal perfection increases. The work of Marthe Robert is a formidable invitation to revisit traditional romantic kind where one realizes that by recalling the evolution of the novel it is the evolution of the company which is read. In 1972, Marthe Robert noted that the novel had become purely formal, that the Bastard one had there no more its word to say, and that only the Child found there reigned as a Master leaving the free novel say only the narcissistic giddiness of his own writing.

Birth of the modern novel

At the beginning of the history of the novel two very contrasted traditions cohabit. The first is that of the comic novel, engaged by Cervantès and Rabelais, which continues throughout the 17th century, particularly in France and Spain. It is a resolutely parodic and realistic novel, which scoffs the noble literature and the established values.

The second is the heiress of the tale of chivalry and the Greek novel. She asserts a certain nobility of the feelings and expression and a serious style. With the advent of the historical novel, the Marvellous which characterized this tradition is gradually abandoned with the profit of realism.

During the 18th century, these two traditions little by little will amalgamate to give rise to the kind which we know, with its mixture characteristic of serious and irony.

Founders

It is generally considered that the modern novel is born with Rabelais ( the Five books , 1532 - 1564) then Cervantès ( Don Quichotte , 1605 - 1615). In a characteristic way, these two novels parody the medieval tale of chivalry. To the noble language and the commonplaces of the tale of chivalry, these authors oppose the diversity of the languages of all the company and a party taken of realism, even of commonplace.

The tale of chivalry is not the only model which the first modern novelists took as a starting point. The New medieval (and more particularly the Décaméron of Boccace) as well as the literature and the popular joke were also influential sources. The influence of the Christian literature, in particular franciscaine, on the work of Rabelais was also noted.

Rabelais and Cervantès will remain a constant reference for the near total of the romantic literature.

The novel baroque

Miss de Scudéry, Honore d' Urfé: large novels, marvellous adventures, sentimentalism, conventional aspect. Inspired of the Romance Greek. They are generally “saga novels” in which the love plays a very great part. Besides this topic is accompanied by many bounces, removals, etc These novels tell a little idyllic accounts (at the origin in the form of a dialog in love) within a pastoral, bucolic framework. There is a kind of casuistry in love.

The small gallant and historical novel

In second half of the 17th century, one sees appearing a new type of novel which is opposed radically to the esthetics of the novel baroque. It is of “small very short novels” (in opposition to the thousands of pages of the novel baroque), and about a resolutely realistic style. Whereas the novel baroque was located in a mythical past, these novelists borrow their subject from the historical past. In the novel baroque, the adventures proceed entirely in the sphere of the public life. In the small novel, it is the private sphere which is put at the center of the account. In addition these small novels are opposed to the comic novels by a serious tone and the use of a high style. For these reasons, one can consider that these novels mark the birth of the romantic form such as we know it still today.

The most significant examples are the Princess of Clèves of Madam de Lafayette (1678) and Dom Carlos of César Vichard de Saint-Réal (1672). Whereas the first novel of Madam de Lafayette, Zayde (1670), was a “Spanish history”, its second novel showed that the capacity of France has to produce novels suitable for the French taste. The stories of proud Spaniards fighting in duel to avenge their reputation succeeds a French novel more readily carried the meticulous observation of the human character and behavior. The heroin, placed in front of the occasion of an illicit love, resists not only temptation, but is made more unhappy while admitting its feelings to her husband.

The rupture introduced by the Princess of Clèves into the history of the novel is accompanied by an awakening of specificities of the romantic kind. Published in foreword of Zayde , celebrates it Traité origin of the novels of Pierre-Daniel Huet, poses a certain number of questions touching with the romantic kind: what teaches us works of fiction from a foreign culture or one distant period on its creators? Which cultural needs for such stories do meet they? Do there exist fundamental anthropological bases incentive with the creation of fictitious worlds? Were these works of fiction diverting and instructive? Were they satisfied - what one could suppose with the reading of the ancient and medieval myths - to provide a substitute product to a more scientific knowledge, or constituted an addition with the luxuries of the life appreciated by a particular culture? This treaty, which created the first corpus of the texts to be discussed, was the first to show how to interpret works of fiction. Conveyed in a certain number of editions and translations, the Traité of Huet obtained a central position among the writings treating of the fiction in prose.

The comic novel and picaresque

August 1st

in France, Charles Sorel, Paul Scarron, Antoine Furetière, Savinien de Cyrano of Bergerac, Jean de Lannel,
in Germany, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, perpetuate the tradition of Rabelais and Cervantès.

It is with the Life of Lazarillo de Tormes , an anonymous Spanish account published in 1554, that the vogue of the picaresque novel starts. In the picaresque novel, a hero pauper and débrouillard (the picaro ) cross all the layers of the company during adventures full with bounces.

Quevedo ( History of Gift Pablo of Segovia , 1626) will give to this kind its most succeeded expression. Nearly one century later, the French Alain-Rene Lesage takes again this tradition with the Histoire of Gil Blas de Santillane (1715 - 1735).

picaresque novel will remain a model for the later novel: robinson crusoe, Tom Jones, till the mischievous one.

The rise of the English novel

It is in England during the 18th century which the novel acquires little by little the central place in the literature that he knows today still. It is indeed by the novel that the practice of the reading is diffused in a recently taught reading and writing population. The first novels with success appear, such Robinson Crusoe or Tristram Shandy . The revival of the novel is propagated quickly in France, then in Germany.

In addition the shape of the novel changes. This period is characterized by a large variety in the form and romantic esthetics. The fictitious aspect is still put in front of ludic way by a Laurence Sterne, Daniel Defoe or Walter Scott dissimulates it under the appearance of an authentic account in biographical or historical matter. In addition forms are borrowed from other literary kinds or extra-arts persons (correspondence, confession, account of voyage). Lastly, it is at that time that is born the romantic hero such as we know it today, with a complex and evolutionary psychology.

In the expansion of the English novel of the time, one can try to distinguish the following categories:

the social novel : Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen. Imitated by the French the abbot Prévost and Marivaux.
the Romance of adventure and historical : Walter Scott, Daniel Defoe.
the comic novel : Laurence Tern, Tobias Smollett. This style will be an inspiration for Diderot in France and Jean Paul in Germany.
the Romance precursory Gothic, of the Romanticism and the Fantastic . Let us quote Horace Walpole, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford. It is characterized by a worrying atmosphere, animated adventures. This style is to be brought closer, in the French literature, of works of Pixérécourt, the Marquis de Sade and the Pole Jean Potocki.

The epistolary novel

The novel by letters or epistolary Roman knows a great vogue at the end of the 18th century. This style of novel profits from the vogue for the reading of real correspondences and makes it possible to add to the novel a Effet of reality which corresponds to the new taste of the public. The epistolary novel generally expresses the sufferings of an impossible love, and perhaps close to the sensitive Roman.

It is undoubtedly English Samuel Richardson ( Pamela or the rewarded Virtue , 1740, Clarisse Harlowe , 1748) who contributed more to success of this romantic kind. Its novels caused many imitations and of parodies.

The medieval letters of Héloïse and Abélard inspire with Jean-Jacques Rousseau her Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), and the Lettres of the Portuguese nun (1669) the Nun of Diderot (1796). Let us quote finally Senancour and Choderlos de Laclos which gave to the epistolary kind two masterpieces. In Germany, it is with the Sufferings of the young person Werther of Goethe that the kind culminates.

The philosophical novel

Although they traditionally prefer the tale or the philosophical dialog to him, the philosophers and moralists of the 18th century also used the romantic kind. It is the case of famous the Candide of Voltaire and of the Gulliver's Travels of Jonathan Swift, which present both like parodies of the novels of adventures like Robinson Crusoé .

The novel libertine

The Roman libertine makes profitable philosophy Lumières to tackle the established order. Its authors are Crébillon wire, Diderot, the Marquis de Sade, Choderlos de Laclos, Gervaise de Latouche, Boyer d' Argens, Fougeret de Monbron or Morlière.

Or the novel king

To the end of, the novel became its ripe. Its form and its esthetics will not change much any more until the 20th century. The format of the novels, the arrangement of chapters, the use of passed of narration and an omniscient narrator form a common base little called in question. Descriptions and the psychology of the characters become paramount.

The romantic novel

Realism and naturalism

The realistic novel is characterized by the probability of the intrigues, often inspired of actual facts, like by the richness of descriptions and the psychology of the characters. One meets characters there belonging to all the layers of the company and several successive generations. This will to build an at the same time coherent and complete romantic world sees its result in the human Comédie of Honore de Balzac. This project will have a considerable influence on the history of the novel in particular in first half of the 20th century.

In addition to Balzac, the French realistic school also counts Flaubert and Maupassant. Let us note however that these authors did not confine themselves with the realistic style (fantastic literature for Balzac and Maupassant, symbolism for Flaubert). At the end of 19th, realism evolves on the one hand to the objective naturalism of a Zola and on the other hand towards the psychological novel.

The Russian novel gave to the realistic novel several its masterpieces: Anna Karénine of Leon Tolstoï (1873 - 1877), Fathers and wire of Ivan Tourgueniev (1862), Oblomov of Ivan Gontcharov (1858). Lastly, the novel of Dostoïevski, whose importance for the history of the novel is fundamental, can by certain aspects being attached to this movement.

Realism also is essential in the rest of Europe: George Eliot and Anthony Trollope in England, Eça de Queiroz in Portugal. In Germany and Austria, the style Biedermeier imposes a realistic novel loan of moralism (Adalbert Stifter).

At the beginning of the 20th century, they are the American writers such as John Steinbeck, Jack London or Ernest Hemingway which will perpetuate the style naturalist.

The popular Romance

With the generalization of the elimination of illiteracy, the taste of the reading touches the popular layers now, in particular through the cheap editions distributed by hawking and of the Roman serial. Among the popular authors of 19th, let us quote Eugene Sue, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas and Paul de Kock.

The 19th century sees also the birth of two popular romantic kinds: the detective novel with Wilkie Hakes and Edgar Allan Poe and the science-fiction novel with Jules Verne and Herbert George Wells.

The satirical novel

The English satirical tradition of remains with authors such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray or, in France, Octave Mirbeau. While integrating certain aspects of the realistic novel, in particular the importance of descriptions and the ambition to present a “cross-section” of all the company, it is a popular and middle-class novel.

In Russia, the satirical style is illustrated by Nicolas Gogol ( dead Hearts , 1840), and by certain novels of Dostoïevski ( the Borough of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants , 1859).

The novel with the conquest of the world

The modern novel replaces little by little the poetry as means of expression privileged of the national conscience of the people which reach modernity. One can quote for example:

the scarlet letter of Nathaniel Hawthorne (the United States, 1850)
Eugene Onéguine Romance in worms of Alexandre Pouchkine (Russia, 1823 - 1831)
I am a cat of Natsume Sôseki (Japan, 1905)
the posthumous memories of Arm Cubed Machado de Assis (Brazil, 1881)
death and the young girls of Alexandre Papadiamantis (Greece, 1903)

The novel like universe

Years 1880 at the years 1940, the novel tends to give an account of all the individual human experiment (psychological novel) or collective (novel Viennese and American). The novels are done longer and seek to link in a single structure of the heterogeneous elements.

The psychological novel

Towards the end of the 19th century, many novelists seek to develop the psychological analysis of the characters: last novels of Maupassant, Romain Roland, Paul Le Bourget, Colette, D.H. Lawrence. The intrigue, descriptions of places and, to a lesser extent, from social environments, pass in the second plan.

Henry James introduces an additional aspect which will become central in the continuation of the history of the novel: the style becomes the average privileged person to reflect the psychological universe of the characters. The desire to approach with more close the interior life of the characters will bring in particular to the development of the technique of the Stream of consciousness: the Lieutenant Güstel , Arthur Schnitzler (1901), the Waves, Virginia Woolf (1931), and several chapters of Ulysses of James Joyce (1922).

The rise of the psychological novel reflects that of experimental psychology (work of William James, brother of Henry, and the school Viennese), then that of the psychoanalysis. The interest of the novelists for these theoretical developments is illustrated for example by the novel the Conscience of Zeno of Italo Svevo (1923).

The novel Viennese

At the beginning of the 20th century, several novelists take again the Balzac project to build a polyphonic novel reflecting all the one time aspects. It will be in particular the case of several novelists Viennese. Thus the Man without qualities of Robert Musil (posthumous publication in 1943) and the Sleepwalkers of Hermann Broch (1928 - 1931) have the ambition to represent, through the destiny of some characters, the evolution of the values of the Western company. These two novels integrate long passages of reflections and philosophical comments which clarify the allegorical dimension of work. In the third part of the Sleepwalkers , Broch still widens the horizon of the novel by the juxtaposition of different styles: narrative, reflexive, autobiographical.

One finds to a certain extent the same ambition adding up in other novelists Viennese of this time (Arthur Schnitzler, Heimito von Doderer, Joseph Roth) and more generally in authors of German language such as Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin or Elias Canetti.

Lastly, this design of the novel also finds at the French Roger Martin of Gard in Thibault (1922 - 1929) and the American John Dos Passos in his trilogy the U.S.A. (1930 - 1936).

Proust and Joyce

The era of the suspicion

The consecutive questioning of the modernism and humanism to the two world wars involves an upheaval of the novel. The large novel immanent and monumental disappears with the profit from more personal, more unreal or more formal accounts. The novelists are then confronted with a double impossibility: that of an objective account on the one hand, and that of a transmission of the individual experiment on the other hand. It is between these two limits that for this period a novel dominated by the anguish and the interrogation is built.

The novel existentialist

Strong bonds existed between philosophy existentialist and the novel. Søren Kierkegaard, which one generally considers the precursor of this philosophy, was interested much in the novel (see p.ex. the Newspaper of the Seducer in Either… or… ). According to him, only a subjective account can give an account of what is really the existence.

In fact, one can observe emergence in years 1930 of novels echoing the concepts of philosophy existentialist. These novels often appear as one account to the first anybody, even of a newspaper. The topics of loneliness, the anguish, the difficulty of communicating and of finding a direction with the existence are important there. Often, one also finds there certain of criticism of modernity and humanistic optimism. These authors generally use a style expressionnist inherited Dostoïevski.

It is undoubtedly Jean-Paul Sartre which the most clearly illustrates this bond between literature and philosophy. Its first novel, Nausea , had been designed from the start like a setting in the form romantic of philosophical concepts.

The Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz, which knew philosophy existentialist very well, also regarded the novel as a means of returning concretes the philosophical reflection. In the current existentialist it makes exception by the lightness and the humor of its novels which places it in the line of Charles Dickens.

One will be able to still quote the case of Albert Camus, to which philosophy, near to the existentialism, also nourished its novel. Its style minimalist, near to that of the writers American naturalists, contrast however with the expressionnism of Sartre or Gombrowicz. In a more general way, one can find similarities between the thought existentialist and the novels of Knut Hamsun, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, of Dino Buzzati, Cesare Pavese even of Boris Vian.

Lastly, the Japanese novel of post-war period (Mishima, Kawabata, Kōbō Abe and more still Kenzaburō Ōe) often develops topics close to the existentialism.

Released imagination

The incredible one was an essential component of the novel to its birth, but it was excluded little by little from the romantic literature, except for the literature of kind (Fantastique, Merveilleux).

At the beginning of the 20th century the incredible one remakes its appearance in the novel like in the Nouvelle. It is generally about a dark or grotesque imagination. Thus Franz Kafka plunges its characters in universe of nightmare where one can be condemned for a fault which one did not make ( the Lawsuit , posthumous publication in 1925), or named to a load which does not exist ( the Castle , posthumous publication in 1926). The influence of Kafka will be deep on all the novel of the 20th century, and will cause in many writers a greater freedom vis-a-vis the guns of realism.

Among the many novelists who took part in this revival of the literature of imagination, let us quote Mikhaïl Boulgakov, Boris Vian, but also the generation of the " boom" Latin-American literature, which publishes its principal works in the years 1960 and 1970: Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes. See the article magic Realism.

This mixture of realism and fantastic elements is always very present in the novel of today. Let us quote for example the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, or the French group of the Nouvelle Fiction.

The totalitarian experiment

The tragic dimension of the history of the 20th century was largely reflected by the literature of the time. The accounts or testimonys of combatants of the two world wars, former deportees or survivors of genocides first of all translate a will to share a tragic experiment and to register it in the memory of humanity. However the search for a specific esthetic form for these accounts is completely significant. This was not without consequence on the romantic form. One thus sees appearing not-fictional accounts but using the technique and the format of the novel. Let us quote for example If it is a man (Primo Levi, 1947), the Night (Elie Wiesel, 1958) the Mankind (Robert Antelme, 1947), Être without destiny (Imre Kertész, 1975). These accounts will have in their turn an influence on the romantic literature, for authors such as Georges Perec or Marguerite Duras.

Because of censure, the recourse to the fiction in the denunciation of the crimes of Soviet terror is more systematic. Novels such as One day of Ivan Denissovitch of Alexandre Soljenitsyne (1962), a Tomb for Boris Davidovitch of Danilo KIS (1976), or the Joke of Milan Kundera (1967) were for much in the awakening of the misdeeds of Soviet totalitarianism. More specifically, it is the destruction of the sphere of the private life, place par excellence of the novel, which is denounced in these works.

Lastly, one can note the development at the 20th century of a new kind of novel, the Dystopie or anti-Utopia. These novels, whose political dimension is essential, describe a world delivered to arbitrary of the dictatorship. This kind was a spectacular success in particular in Central Europe and Russia. Most famous is the Lawsuit of Franz Kafka, 1984 of Georges Orwell, Brave New World of Aldous Huxley, and Us Others of Ievgueni Zamiatine. These novels anticipate sometimes in a seizing way the totalitarian drifts of the 20th century.

The New Novel

The novel today: the romantic form in question

In Europe, return to the overall exploration of 18th: the novel seeks new models in the other kinds: autobiography, poetry, newspaper, report, even in the visual arts. The fictitious character which was central in the beginning takes less importance. The novel is seen more like a very free kind able to accommodate experiments of language.

In the United States and in the Anglo-Saxon world, maintenance of a more traditional tradition, critical moralist of the materialism and nihilism of the modern society.

The place of the novel in the cultural practices changes radically. Competed with by the radio, the cartoon, the cinema and television, it loses its statute of privileged reflection of the time. The novels are done shorter, reflecting the reduction in the time devoted to the reading. The offer diversifies with the multiplication of small houses of editions. Lastly, a world literary market dominated by the Anglo-Saxon production is set up.

Anglo-Saxon moralism

Novel which wants to be critical modern society. Rejection of the nihilism and the materialism, but laic. Faithful to the polyphonic and realistic style Balzac, but with more freedom in the narration. Sometimes some incursions into a near future, science fiction with Ballard and Houellebecq. Primarily represented in the Anglo-Saxon world, the United States, Great Britain, South Africa and Israel. Great names: Philip Roth, J.M. Coetzee, Saul Bellow, and inspiration of Milan Kundera. Young people: Rick Moody, Jonathan Franzen, William Vollmann, Bret Easton Ellis. One can add the English James Graham Ballard, the French Michel Houellebecq, Benoît Duteurtre.

The novel worship or générationnel

One understands by “novel worship” the novel which federates a more or less vast group of readers and which takes the dimension of générationnel. Among the examples most often quoted one counts inter alia: the Catch-Hearts of J.D. Salinger, Hello sadness of Francoise Sagan, Junkie of William S. Burroughs, Last exit to Brooklyn of Hubert Selby Jr, On the road of Jack Kerouac, Bandini of John Fante, Less than zero of Bret Easton Ellis, Newspaper of a night-bird of Jay McInerney, Generation X of Douglas Coupland, Fight Club of Chuck Palahniuk, the Old man and the Child of François Augiéras, etc

The novel like playing field

At the beginning of 20th, in reaction to serious of the novel, novels parodic or ludic: Alfred Jarry, Raymond Roussel, Ronald Firbank, Victor Chklovski.

exercises of style: Raymond Queneau and OULIPO. Perec, Italo Calvino, Harry Mathews
Romance postmodern: Blank O' Brien, John Fowles, Vladimir Nabokov, Jean Echenoz, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Christian Oster, Eric Laurrent, Marie NDiaye, François Bon, etc
new fiction: Frédérick Tristan .

The space of the page

Renewed interest for the exploration of the typographical possibilities (heritage of Laurence Tern, but also of poetry). William Gass, Raymond Federman, French Maurice Rock and, more recently, Olivier Cadiot and Alexandre Jardin.

Hybrid novels

hybridization of the novel with the test, literary journal (Pascal Quignard, Miklos Szentkuthy) or close friend (Herve Guibert and the Autofiction), report, the historical or biographical account. Typical in this respect the work of W.G. Sebald, which mixes the autobiography, the historical or literary test, illustrated report and fiction.

The oral language

The novel always made function the dialectical one between the written language (literary) and the oral language. But since ten years, this aspect became central. Work of the Austrian Thomas Bernhard, very great influence on the world literature. Examples: Lydie Salvayre, Emmanuel Adély, Jonathan Safran Foer, Roddy Doyle, etc

Types of writing

See too

related kinds:

New epopee
Tale
Account

Internal bonds

Literature
Romance black
New novel
Kinds and literary forms
Model or diagram actantiel
Romance Greek

External bonds

the character of novel (Magister site.)
Gallica
Site on the books (for 10-20 years)

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