The Novel’s Evolution in the 17th and 18th Centuries
This essay aims to develop the evolution of the novel throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The term “novel” itself means something new and original that has never been seen, used, or even thought of before. This is the reason why book-length works of fiction were designated by the name “novel.” They were innovative as they presented a more familiar nature and represented the readers’ intrigues in practice, delighting them with accidents and odd events, which were not unusual but close to the readers’ surroundings.
The Ancestors of the Novel
The ancestors of the novel were Elizabethan prose fiction and French romances. In the novels of prose fiction, there is normally a narrator, and it usually deals with philosophy, essays, or experiments. It is important to highlight some differences between prose and prose fiction, as prose fiction is not real. The author invents or creates new characters and new words, like Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666), with the creation of a new world (p.1656? line 6-8 “[…]; it is a description […] the Blazing World”). There are three words used by Cavendish to define prose fiction: romantical, philosophical, and fantastical (p.1656? line 8-10 “[…]the first part […] fantastical,[…]”). At the time, fiction in England was not very much developed, and a lot of the fiction being read came from other countries, as for example, France. French novels were extremely long and complicated, with a very loose plot, a protocol that told people how to behave, and aristocratic characters so lower classes could not identify themselves with the characters. Little by little, the audience of England started reading other prose fiction like:
- Courtly fiction (the French novels already mentioned)
- English romances (an attempt to translate in vernacular terms the French texts)
- Philosophical novels (intended to analyze how far human reason, aided by the light of nature, could go)
- Epistolary narrative (an imported narrative from Spain which uses private letters for story-telling and there are three types of letters: news letters, love letters, and travel letters)
- Crime and adventure fiction (dealt against roguery)
- The short narrative or novella
The Short Narrative or Novella
The short narrative or novella above-mentioned is shorter than the current novel. The perfect example is Oronooko (1688) by Aphra Behn. In this novella, there is fantasy, exoticism, and a perfect combination of realism and fantasy. The exoticism in this novella can be seen in the description of places (p.13 “Coramantien, a country […] all their freights.”) or the description of people who inhabited them (p.13 “The king of Coramantien […] knew not his quality.”); and the realism in the references Behn makes about Charles II and historical events (p.51 “Though, in a word, […] with it to the Dutch.”; p.60 “And it is to be bemoaned what His Majesty lost by losing that part of America.”). This short narrative is influenced by Italian examples and Cervantes’s Novelas Exemplares (1590-1612), which was a huge success. What it wants to provide is an example of a moral trait, moral virtue.
The 18th Century Novel
In the eighteenth century, there was a true market for the novel. It was a very successful type of writing, as in this period a lot of people learned to read and were interested in reading novels in terms of moral learning. Among all the genres above-mentioned, the one which remains and flourishes will be the novel. It became so successful due to the possibility of being identified with the characters, as they are not from the upper-class, the individual is in the center, and the main characters can be inspiring because there is a society where models were very much needed, as society was changing a lot, and the old English classes were being disrupted by the growing middle-class, which was often made of people coming from the countryside. The novels are going to offer a very good kind of *guide* to behave.
Defoe and Swift
The first half of this century is going to be marked by Daniel Defoe—the father of the English novel—and by Jonathan Swift, who opposed Daniel Defoe. On the one hand, Defoe was a clear representative of the middle class, and he represents the transition to a more materialistic culture. On the other hand, Swift was more focused on intellectual ideas; he is very critical of humans and pretends to be judgmental. Swift was more political, Defoe more humanitarian.
Defoe’s most famous novel was Robinson Crusoe. The structure is loose, and there are a lot of details. It’s a piece of travel literature. The style was very criticized by the Scriblerus Club. They wanted to write a parody of this because it represented everything they disliked. Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels as a parody for Robinson Crusoe, as he wanted to create a satire not only mocking Robinson Crusoe but also exposing the abuses of learning and science. This way, it can be seen that the novel also took a satirical tone in this period.
The Sentimental Novel and the Gothic Novel
The next change that the novel suffers happens in 1740, with Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, which creates the concept of “sentimental novel.” The sentimental novel is the result of an interest in cultivating feelings that leads the transition from the first half of the century to the second. Society moves from a time centered on reason and logical thinking into the understanding of feelings. However, this obsession evolves into a negative approach because people began exaggerating their sentimental behavior. There was an evolution of the term sentiment: from “exhibiting refined and elevated feelings” to “addicted to indulgence in superficial emotion.” Furthermore, in this second half of the eighteenth century, there is another innovation in the concept of the novel. A new genre emerged in 1764 with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto: the gothic novel. He used the label “gothic” in his second edition of The Castle of Otranto, which was published with his name after seeing the response he got from the public with the first edition. He created “a new species of romance” where he attempted to blend the two kinds of romance (ancient and modern). With gothic fiction, the development of the gothic novel comes to a circle, to the early attempt to create prose fiction that was close to the novel. It is an interesting type of fiction which takes us away from reality, moving on from natural horror (a type of horror produced by tangible things) to a supernatural horror (provoked by entities we cannot explain). He achieves this by using, mostly, elements that appear in Shakespeare’s plays. These are, for example, the castle in which the storyline of the novel happens, the appearance (p.24-25 “[…] the picture, which began to move, […] with violence by an invisible hand.”; p. 93-94 “[…] he saw a person kneeling […] and vanished.”) or the mention (p.38 “This castle is certainly haunted […] I would not speak to a ghost for the world,[…]”) of ghosts, and supernatural events (p.52-53 “[…]the trampling of horses […] by some invisible wearer.”) For some time, no one followed Walpole’s attempt, but at the end of the century, when the novel of manners and the sentimental novel, some authors see in the Gothic novel a survival of the novel. The main example can be found in the 19th century with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the novel has always been important as people always needed it to entertain themselves by reading. This way, the novel has evolved by adapting itself to the needs of the readers and their preferences throughout the different periods of time.