11 Literary Narrative Fiction Genres of Narrative Fiction

11 Literary Narrative Fiction Genres of Narrative Fiction; History of the Form

Recap: Narratives Personal, political, historical, legal, medical narratives: narrative’s power to capture certain truths and experiences in special ways - unlike other modes of explanation and analysis such as statistics, descriptions, summaries, or reasoning via conceptual abstractions

The spectrum of fiction fact – fiction – truth? History Realism Romance Fantasy Romance Realism vs romance: a matter of perception vs a matter of vision 2 principal ways fiction can be related to life

Literary narrative fiction literature: art of language kinds of Iiterature: poetry, drama, narrative fiction prose: from Latin prosa or proversa oratio =‘straightforward discourse’ M. Jourdain: I've been speaking in PROSE all along! Moliere (1622 -1673), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

Literary conventions an agreement between artist and audience as to the significance of features appearing in a work of art knowledge of conventions = literary competence narrative: tells of real or imagined events; tells a story fiction: an imagined creation in verse/prose/drama story: (imagined) events or happenings, involving a conflict plot: arrangement of action → structure

Literary, narrative, fictional: distinct features, do not presuppose each other • Where do we place lyric poetry? Marie-Laure Ryan, Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1991

Literary, narrative, fictional: examples literary narrative fictional + + + - - - + + - - - Lit. narr. fict. Nonlit. nonnarr. nonfiction

Testing What can you notice about the following excerpts? (Can you guess the period, the author, the work? ) How is the weather defining the beginning of the book in Chapter 1? What do we find out about the narrator from the way Mrs Fairfax is introduced in Ch 12? How is the introduction of the people in Moor house different in Ch 30? Do you notice anything special about the way the last chapter, Ch 38 begins?

Chapter 1 There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early), the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. (Penguin Classics edition, p 39)

Chapter 12 The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lovely child; who had been spoilt and indulged (140)

Chapter 30 The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In a few days I have so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their occupations, converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time – the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles. (376)

Chapter 38 Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor house, where Mary was cooking the dinner, and John cleaning the knives, and I said – ‘Mary, I have been married to Mr Rochester this morning. ’ (474)

The history of fiction • Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957) • Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel (1988) • Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel (1996)

Novel In: J. A. Cuddon: Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1999 Derived from Italian novella, 'tale, piece of news‘ applied to a wide variety of writings only common attribute is that they are extended pieces of prose fiction The length of novels varies greatly (when is a novel not a novel but a long short-story or a short novel or a novella? ) Fewer and fewer rules in contemporary practice a novel is between 6070. 000 words and 200. 000.

Cuddon Novel (the term) Meanings and implications of the term at different stages: 15 th to t 18 th cc. its meaning tended to derive from the Italian novella and the Spanish novela (the French term nouvelle is closely related). The term (often used in a plural sense) denoted short stories or tales of the kind one finds in Boccaccio's Decameron (c. 1349 - 51). Nowadays we would classify all the contents of these as short stories.

Cuddon Novel /novelty Meaning of the term: a prose narrative about characters and their actions in what was recognizably everyday life, usually in the present, with the emphasis on things being 'new' or a 'novelty'. It was used in contradistinction to 'romance'. In the 19 th c. the concept of 'novel' was enlarged.

Cuddon Novel (as a form) The form - susceptible to change and development Pliable and adaptable to a seemingly endless variety of topic and themes A wide range of sub-species or categories.

Cuddon Novel (subject matter) The subject matter of the novel eludes classification. A number of these classifications shade off into each other. For example: psychological novel is a term which embraces many books; proletarian, propaganda and thesis novels tend to have much in common; the picaresque narrative is often a novel of adventure; a saga novel may also be a regional novel.

Cuddon Novel (origins) The origins of the genre are obscure but in the time of the XIIth Dynasty Middle Kingdom (c. 1200 BC) Egyptians were writing fiction of a kind which one would describe as a novel today

Cuddon Novel (early) From Classical times: Daphnis and Chloe (2 nd c. BC) by Longus The Golden Ass (2 nd c. AD) by Apuleius Satyricon (1 st c. AD) of Petronius Arbiter Most of these are concerned with love and contain the rudiments of novels as we understand them today

Cuddon Novel (Oriental) Oriental prose fiction: Arabian Nights‘ Entertainments, or The Thousand One Nights, 10 th c. the collection, collected and established as a group of stories probably by an Egyptian professional story-teller at some time between the 14 th and 16 th c. Became known in Europe early in the 18 th c. , since when they have had a considerable influence.

Cuddon Novel (forerunners of) Collections of novella or short tales, integrated Italy : Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1349– 52, revised 1370– 1371) influence on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (late 14 th c. ) Matteo Bandello’s Le Novelle (written between 1510 – 1560) France : Marguerite of Navarre‘ Heptaméron (published in 1558) written in prose form method of narration creation and development of character

Cuddon Novel (from verse to prose) Until 14 th c. literature of entertainment mostly confined to narrative verse, particularly the epic and the romance. Romance → the word roman, which is the term for novel in most European languages. Novel ← in some ways a descendant of the medieval romances, which, in the first place, like the epic, were written in verse and then in prose (e. g. Malory's Morte D'Arthur, 1485) prose narratives by the end of the 17 th c.

Cuddon Novel (Spain, France) Spain: ahead of the rest of Europe in the development of the novel form. Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) satirized chivalry and a number of the earlier novels France Rabelais's Gargantua (1534) and Pantagruel (1532) can be classed as novels of phantasy (later examples may be loosely described as science fiction)

Cuddon Novel (England) England, end of the 15 th c. , extended prose narrative: John Lyly's Euphues (in two parts, 1578 and 1580 Sir Philip Sidney's pastoral romance Arcadia (1590). 1719 – Daniel Defoe published his story of adventure Robinson Crusoe (tradition of desert island fiction) Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722), a sociological novel, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), historical fiction

Sub-genres Integrated short stories Arabian Nights' Entertainments, or The Thousand One Nights, Boccaccio, Decameron James Joyce, Dubliners

Sub-genres Romance any sort of story of chivalry or of love Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605 -1615) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14 th c. ) Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur (15 th c. )

Sub-genres Pastoral romance Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (2 nd c. A. D. ) Philip Sidney, Arcadia (1590) Anti-pastoral: Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895)

Sub-genres Picaresque novel (Sp pícaro, ‘rogue’) tells the life of a knave or a picaroon who is the servant of several masters Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722) Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild (1743)

Sub-genres Novel of adventure / desert island novel related to the picaresque novel and the romance Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883) Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer (1876) Huckleberry Finn (1885) James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

Sub-genres Gothic novel a type of romance, popular from the 1760 s until the 1820 s, has terror and cruelty as main themes, impact on the ghost story and the horror story Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764 Ann Radcliffe, Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Sub-genres Gothic novel (continued) Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861) R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) (Doppelgänger, the Other within/projected) (later: horror films, thrillers)

Sub-genres Epistolary novel in the form of letters, popular in the 18 th c. Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740) and Clarissa Harlowe (1747, 1748) Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker (1771)

Sub-genres Sentimental novel / novel of sentimentality popular in the 18 th c. , distresses of the virtuous Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740) Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)

Sub-genres Historical novel a form of fictional narrative which reconstructs history imaginatively Walter Scott, Waverly (1814) William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847 -48) Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934) William Golding, Rites of Passage (1980)

Sub-genres Documentary novel based on documentary evidence in the shape of newspaper article, etc. Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966) Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)

Sub-genres Key novel actual persons are presented under fictitious names Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928) (D. H. Lawrence)

Sub-genres Thesis / sociological / propaganda novel treats of a social, political, religious problem Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) The Condition of England novel /regional novel Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849) Mrs Gaskell, North and South (1855)

Sub-genres Utopia [gr. Ou + topos = no place adn eutopia = place where all is well] Thomas More, Utopia (1516) George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726, 1735) William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954) Anti-utopia, dystopia; Science fiction; Phantasy or Fantasy

Sub-genres Campus novel has a university campus as setting Mary Mc. Carthy, The Groves of Academe (1952) Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954) David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

Sub-genres The saga / chronicle novel narrative about the life of a large family John Galsworthy, Forsyte Saga (1906 -1921)

Sub-genres Time novel employs stream of consciousness technique, time is used as a theme James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913 -1927)

Sub-genres Psychological novel concerned with emotional, mental lives of the characters Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)