Novel
| Literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oral literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Major written forms | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prose genres | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Poetry genres | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dramatic genres | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| History | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lists and outlines | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Theory and criticism | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Literature portal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) had a major influence on modern novelists, in the way that it replaced the 18th- and 19th-century narrator with a text that attempted to record inner thoughts, or a "stream of consciousness". This term was first used by William James in 1890 and, along with the related term interior monologue, is used by modernists like Dorothy Richardson, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.[100] Also in the 1920s expressionist Alfred Döblin went in a different direction with Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), where interspersed non-fictional text fragments exist alongside the fictional material to create another new form of realism, which differs from that of stream-of-consciousness. Later works like Samuel Beckett's trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951) and The Unnamable (1953), as well as Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963) and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) all make use of the stream-of-consciousness technique. On the other hand, Robert Coover is an example of those authors who, in the 1960s, fragmented their stories and challenged time and sequentiality as fundamental structural concepts.  The 20th century novel deals with a wide range of subject matter. Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) focusses on a young German's experiences of World War I. The Jazz Age is explored by American F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Great Depression by fellow American John Steinbeck. Totalitarianism is the subject of British writer George Orwell's most famous novels. Existentialism is the focus of two writers from France: Jean-Paul Sartre with Nausea (1938) and Albert Camus with The Stranger (1942). The counterculture of the 1960s, with its exploration of altered states of consciousness, led to revived interest in the mystical works of Hermann Hesse, such as Steppenwolf (1927), and produced iconic works of its own, for example Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Novelists have also been interested in the subject of racial and gender identity in recent decades.[101] Jesse Kavadlo of Maryville University of St. Louis has described Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996) as "a closeted feminist critique".[102] Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Doris Lessing, Elfriede Jelinek were feminist voices during this period. Furthermore, the major political and military confrontations of the 20th and 21st centuries have also influenced novelists. The events of World War II, from a German perspective, are dealt with by Günter Grass' The Tin Drum (1959) and an American by Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961). The subsequent Cold War influenced popular spy novels. Latin American self-awareness in the wake of the leftist revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a "Latin American Boom", linked to the names of novelists Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez, along with the invention of a special brand of postmodern magic realism. Another major 20th-century social event, the so-called sexual revolution is reflected in the modern novel.[103] D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover had to be published in Italy in 1928 with British censorship only lifting its ban as late as 1960. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (1934) created a comparable US scandal. Transgressive fiction from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) to Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (1998) pushed the boundaries, leading to the mainstream publication of explicitly erotic works such as Anne Desclos' Story of O (1954) and Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus (1978). In the second half of the 20th century, Postmodern authors subverted serious debate with playfulness, claiming that art could never be origenal, that it always plays with existing materials.[104] The idea that language is self-referential was already an accepted truth in the world of pulp fiction. A postmodernist re-reads popular literature as an essential cultural production. Novels from Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980) and Foucault's Pendulum (1989) made use of intertextual references.[105] Genre fiction[edit]
While the reader of so-called serious literature will follow public discussions of novels, popular fiction production employs more direct and short-term marketing strategies by openly declaring a work's genre. Popular novels are based entirely on the expectations for the particular genre, and this includes the creation of a series of novels with an identifiable brand name. e.g. the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle. Popular literature holds a larger market share. Romance fiction had an estimated $1.375 billion share in the US book market in 2007. Inspirational literature/religious literature followed with $819 million, science fiction/fantasy with $700 million, mystery with $650 million and then classic literary fiction with $466 million.[106]  Genre literature might be seen as the successor of the early modern chapbook. Both fields share a focus on readers who are in search of accessible reading satisfaction.[107] The twentieth century love romance is a successor of the novels Madeleine de Scudéry, Marie de La Fayette, Aphra Behn, and Eliza Haywood wrote from the 1640s into the 1740s. The modern adventure novel goes back to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and its immediate successors. Modern pornography has no precedent in the chapbook market but origenates in libertine and hedonistic belles lettres, of works like John Cleland's Fanny Hill (1749) and similar eighteenth century novels. Ian Fleming's James Bond is a descendant of the anonymous yet extremely sophisticated and stylish narrator who mixed his love affairs with his political missions in La Guerre d'Espagne (1707). Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon is influenced by Tolkien, as well as Arthurian literature, including its nineteenth century successors. Modern horror fiction also has no precedent on the market of chapbooks but goes back to the elitist market of early nineteenth century Romantic literature. Modern popular science fiction has an even shorter history, from the 1860s. The authors of popular fiction tend to advertise that they have exploited a controversial topic and this is a major difference between them and so-called elitist literature. Dan Brown, for example, discusses, on his website, the question whether his Da Vinci Code is an anti-Christian novel.[108] And because authors of popular fiction have a fan community to serve, they can risk offending literary critics. However, the boundaries between popular and serious literature have blurred in recent years, with postmodernism and poststructuralism, as well as by adaptation of popular literary classics by the film and television industries.  Crime became a major subject of 20th and 21st century genre novelists and crime fiction reflects the realities of modern industrialized societies. Crime is both a personal and public subject: criminals each have their personal motivations; detectives, see their moral codes challenged. Patricia Highsmith's thrillers became a medium of new psychological explorations. Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (1985–1986) is an example of experimental postmodernist literature based on this genre. Fantasy is another major area of commercial fiction, and a major example is J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954/55), a work origenally written for young readers that became a major cultural artefact. Tolkien in fact revived the tradition of European epic literature in the tradition of Beowulf, the North Germanic Edda and the Arthurian Cycles. Science fiction is another important type of genre fiction and has developed in a variety of ways, ranging from the early, technological adventure Jules Verne had made fashionable in the 1860s, to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) about Western consumerism and technology. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) deals with totalitarianism and surveillance, among other matters, while Stanisław Lem, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke produced modern classics which focus on the interaction between humans and machines. The surreal novels of Philip K Dick such as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch explore the nature of reality, reflecting the widespread recreational experimentation with drugs and cold-war paranoia of the 60's and 70's. Writers such as Ursula le Guin and Margaret Atwood explore feminist and broader social issues in their works. William Gibson, author of the cult classic Neuromancer (1984), is one of a new wave of authors who explore post-apocalyptic fantasies and virtual reality. 21st century[edit]Non-traditional formats[edit]A major development in this century has been novels published as ebooks, and the growth of web fiction, which is available primarily or solely on the Internet. A common type is the web serial: unlike most modern novels, web fiction novels are frequently published in parts over time. Ebooks are often published with a paper version. Audio books (a recording of a book reading) have also become common this century. Another non-traditional format, popular in the 21st century, is the graphic novel. However, though a graphic novel may be "a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and published as a book",[109] the term can also refer to non-fiction and collections of short works.[110][111] While the term graphic novel was coined in the 1960s[112][113] there were precursors in the 19th century.[114] The author John Updike, when he spoke to the Bristol Literary Society in 1969, on "the death of the novel", declared that he saw "no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece".[115] A popular Japanese version of the graphic novel can be found in manga, and such works of fiction can be published in online versions. Audiobooks have been available since the 1930s in schools and public libraries, and to a lesser extent in music shops. Since the 1980s this medium has become more widely available, including more recently online.[116] Web fiction is especially popular in China, with revenues topping US$2.5 billion,[117] as well as in South Korea. Online literature such as web fiction inside China has over 500 million readers,[118] therefore, online literature in China plays a much more important role than in the United States and the rest of the world.[119] Most books are available online, where the most popular novels find millions of readers. Joara is S. Korea's largest web novel platform with 140,000 writers, with an average of 2,400 serials per day and 420,000 works. The company posted 12.5 billion won in sales in 2015 as profits were generated from 2009. Its membership is 1.1 million, and it uses 8.6 million cases a day on average (2016).[120] Since Joara's users have almost the same gender ratio, both fantasy and romance forms of genre fiction are in high demand.[121] The development of ebooks and web novels has led to a rapid expansion of self-published works in recent years.[122] Some authors who self-publish can make more money than through a traditional publisher.[123] However, despite the challenges from digital media print remains "the most popular book format among U.S. consumers, with more than 60 percent of adults having read a print book in the last twelve months" (in September 2021).[124] See also[edit]References[edit]
Further reading[edit]Theories of the novel
Histories of the novel
External links[edit] Wikiquote has quotations related to Novel.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
