WELCOME

A Presentation by

Asst. Prof. V. N. Yamagar

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The Development of English Novels

• What is a novel?

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• A Novel is the best device to present a picture of life lived in a given society against a stable background of social and moral values by the people.

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• It is a photographic presentation of life.

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• The novel presents a work of prose fiction portraying in one or more plot lying in the interrelationship of a number of characters.

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The Development of English Novels

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• The origin of the novel in England is traced out in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a long narrative work.

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The Development of English Novels

• The age of Elizabeth is related to the rise of the prose romance.

• A romance is a fictional story in verse or prose that relates to improbable adventures of idealized characters.

• Thomas Nash [1567-1601]who wrote ,The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton which might be called the first English novel.

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• Thomas Dekker[1570-1632]wrote stories and descriptions of London life and the suffering of London people during the plague of of 1603.

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The Development of English Novels

• In England Daniel Defoe is regarded as the founder of the English novel with his Robinson Crusoe(1719)and Moll Flanders(1722).

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• He wrote Picaresque novels dealing with the lives of a wandering rogue.

• This style of Picaresque novel remained popular till the days of Smollett and Fielding.

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• In the picaresque novel, the protagonists are rascal and they lead a wandering life, have many adventures and at last scandalous.

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The novels during the18^th century:

• Epistolary Novels:

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• During the 18th century, the habit of writing letters became very popular and it gave birth to the epistolary novels.

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• Richardson’s Pamela (1740) is regarded as one of the best epistolary novels of the time which had the requisites of plot, characters and dialogue and these were of high merit.

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The novels during the18^th century:

• Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) is an established form of novel in its full maturity.

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• Smollette while writing Roderick Random(1748) reverted to the picaresque manner.

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• Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy(1760) and made the novel sentimental and fantastic, and founded a sentimental school.

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• The research into national affairs gave birth to the study of history and the historical novels were written. David Hume , Robertson and Gibbon are the important names.

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The novels during the19^th century:

• Jane Austen(1775-1817) :
• Her first novel, Pride and Prejudice published in 1813. she focused on the middle-class people.

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• The heroine is a girl of spirit but she had no extra ordinary qualities.

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• Her second novel, Sense and Sensibility deals with the romantic possibilities but at the end the heroine remains undeceived.

• Features of her Novels :

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• Her characters are developed with minuteness and accuracy. They are ordinary people, but are convincingly alive.

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• Her plots are unromantic. Life in her novels is governed by an easy decorum and moments of fierce emotions.

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• Austen will be remembered for her clear and careful style with an ironic tinges.

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The novels during the19^th century:

• The novel achieved its predominance in the 19^th century .
• It was the golden age of the novel writing.

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• Charles Dickens(1812-70) and other writers found a huge audience and focused on the issues of the time.

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• Dickens ‘s works like Oliver Twist, Hard Times and Bleak House etc.

are preoccupied with social problems. His pictures of poverty and his hopes for improvement gave a new turn to the novels.

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The novels during the19^th century:

• W.M. Thackeray(1811-63) :

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• He was very much influenced by Fielding’s Tom Jones and his work , Vanity Fair proved the genius of the novelist.

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• The book is chiefly concerned with the fortune of the protagonist, Becky Sharp but it reveals the vanities of mankind in general.

• Thackeray will be known for his humour and pathos. In his pathos he is seldom sentimental, but effective and usually quite.

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The novels during the19^th century:

• The Bronte's:
• Charlotte(1816-55),Emily(1818-48) and Anne(1820-49).

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• Charlotte wrote the important novels like, The Professor and Jane Eyre. In her novels she brought an energy and passion that gave to commonplace people the wonder and beauty of the romantic world.

Emily Bronte: Her one novel,

Wuthering Heights is unique in English literature. It presents the spirit of the wild, desolate moors.

The passions of the characters have an elemental force which carries them into the realms of poetry.

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Anne Bronte : she is the least important figure of the three. Her works are much inferior to those of her sisters.

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The novels during the19^th century:

• George Eliot (1819-80) wrote her novels like Adam Bede, the Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner that deal with the tragedy of ordinary lives.
• Her characters are usually drawn from the lower classes of society.
• She is important in the history of fiction because she is always concerned with the problems of the human personality.

George Meredith (1828-1909): Most of his characters are of the higher ranks of society . They have been subtly analysed and elaborately featured.

With the publication of the work, The Egoist(1879), Meredith reached the climax of his art.

Meredith was very careful to make his female characters at least as important as his male ones.

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The novels during the19^th century:

• Thomas Hardy(1840-1920) was associated with the concluding part of the 19th century.

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• He picked up mostly ordinary men and women living close to the soil.

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• Hardy’s aim was to present man or woman rather than a particular man or a particular woman.

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• He was a serious novelist attempting to present a view of life through fiction.

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• His important works are the Mayor of Caster bridge, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

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The novels during the 20^th century:

• The novel during the 20th century moved towards a greater increase in psychological subtlety.

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• Henry James in particular had brought a new precision and complexity into the description of states of mind.

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• The theme of the isolation of the individual consciousness became prominent where every individual was seen confined to his own self and his unique stream of consciousness.

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• The 20th century novelists analyzed with their insight the relation between loneliness and love .

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The novels during the 20^th century:

E.M.Forster[1879-1970] developed the theme of human relationships in his novels deliberately.

His A passage to India described the relations between the English and the Indians with the possibilities and the limitations of human relationships.

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Forster is basically a moralist, concerned with the importance of the individual personality.

He is the advocate of culture, tolerance, and civilization against barbarity and provincialism.

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E. M. Forster :Aspects of the novel

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• Forster defines the novel as a work of prose fiction having seven aspects universal to the novel: story, characters, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm.

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• According to Forster :Fantasy implies the supernatural and prophecy is an accent in the novelist’s voice.

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• Prophecy is about mysterious, imprecise meanings which connect us with history of humankind.

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• Pattern is an aesthetic aspect of the novel; it causes us to see the novel as a whole.

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• Rhythm on the other hand is like a musical motif which reappears with slight variations and helps to unify the novel.

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The novels during the 20^th century:

• D. H. Lawrence in his novels discussed this issue of relationship as the basis of a true sex relationship.

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• Lawrence worked on the basic human relationships- between man and his environment.

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• He worked on the relationship between the generations; the relationship between man and woman, and the relationship between instinct and intellect.

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The novels during the 20^th century:

• Joseph Conrad in his novels depicted society as the most corrupting place.

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• He shows how “ material interests” corrupt human relations; however, the attempt to escape from such interests into solitude results in destruction.

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• His novels like Nostromo, Heart of Darkness and Under Western Eyes are notable to study this outlook.

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The novels during the 20^th century:

• Virginia Woolf in her novels Mrs.Dalloway and To the Lighthouse worked on the finest treatments of the problem of loneliness and love.

• In Virginia Woolf, there is an effective interweaving of lyrical and narrative devices.

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• She was none the less concerned with the realities of life.

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• But for her the realities were inward and spiritual rather than outward and material.

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The novels during the 20^th century:

• James Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet and practitioner of experimental narrative techniques.

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• His works like A Portrait of the Artist as a young Man and Ulysses are notable for these techniques.

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The novels during the 20^th century:

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Aldous Huxley :

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• After an important theme of the relation between loneliness and love, the novelists of the inter-war period explored another very modern problem: the relation between knowledge and value. His important work is Brave New World.

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• Aldous Huxley in his novels worked as a reflector of the feelings of his age. As a novelist he has limitations; he has no deep characterization and his novels are slight in plot.

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• Above all, he is a satirist having polished style with a ready wit and an alert mind.

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The novels during the 20^th century:

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• Conclusion

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• On the whole, the novel in the 20th century manifested the disillusionment, cynicism, despair and bewilderment of the age.

• Some serious novelists attempted to establish new values to replace the old. In the works of the important novelists, an interpretation of life is often implicit, rarely directly stated.

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THANK YOU

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The novels during the 20^th century:

• Conclusion

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• Impressionism gave place to an expressionistic technique. The novelists instead of explaining the outward appearance, concentrated on the inner realities of life.

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• The presentation of the “ Stream of Consciousness”, the use of interior monologue and an allusive style were the chief weapons of the novelists attempting to write from within the mind of his character.

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