Novel of 18th century

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18th century NOVEL
the word is derived from the Latin "novus" and from the Italian "novella", it was original and reported recent events or news. NOVEL=prose story relating recent events
The novel potrays characters and actions of real life , the fictitious elements coexist with the parameters of real life. It is caracterised by realism --> different concept of time and space.
Time : exact, chronological obsessive Space: very detailed with descriptions full of particulars ---> this increase the impression of real life.
Factors that determined the rise of modern novel:
-the influence of "philosophical realism"(Descartes,Locke),which focused attention on the individual strength ;
-the influence of Methodism: it taught the individual values + personal effort+ the importance of work and of daily activity;
- the growth of reading public (particularly women readers; the diffusion of newspapers)
-growi8ng demand for novel after the birth of libraries
-wealth of the middle class
-the influence of fictional realism ( like the picaresque narrative, ex:Cervantes's Don Quixote)
FATHERS: Dafoe/Richardson
FEATURES: Novelist--> he is the spokesman of the middle class
Novel---> concerned with what could alter the social status; directed to the middle
class public
AIM: the writer's first aim is to write in a simple way in order to be understood widely
STORY: Real life, human experiences, as novels were directed to self-reliant, self-made men
SUBJECT/CHARACTERS: the bourgeois man and his problems, definite characters, the hero of the
narrative, the mouthpiece of the author, the reader sympathises with
him. They struggle for survival for social success.
Characters are divided into: -people who believe in reason(Robinson C)
-people who cannot control their passion and subordinate reason to
their grooving(necessitа)
TIME: chronological sequence of events; characters are rooted in a temporal dimension
SETTING: detailed descriptions
NARRATOR: is omniscient, intrusive; he never abandons his characters
TYPES OF NOVEL IN 18th CENTURY
THE REALISTIC NOVEL
growth of the novel-reading public --> changes in the reader-writer relationships:
---> As the writer had become a PROFESSIONAL WRITER---> there is any form of patronage, writer becomes independent--->he begins to write to please his public(larger middle class public) that wanted to read about things close to their own individual experience
Writers began to look at reality for inspiration => Novel= a picture of life
ELEMENTS OF REALISTIC NOVEL
- clock time + physical setting are used. TIME + SPACE were made tangible through the use of
details( such as names of streets, particular days)
- certain "COMMUNICATING QUALITIES"(colours,size,exetion) became of primary importance
- attentions are focused not only outdoor settings but also INTERIORS(such as bedrooms..)
- NAMES + SURNAMES were given to the characters
- greater importance was given to MONEY as a status symbol
- a CONFLICT was emphasized between :-->middle-class values (money,power..)
--> chivalric values (honour, glory..)
--> traditional gentlemen values (manners, fashion..)
- a new type of PROTAGONIST developed: PRACTICAL,SELF-MADE,SELF-RELIANT. With
common sense and prudence.

DANIEL DEFOE
He is the first novelist who broke with tradition and started this new type of fiction.At the age of 60 he turned to prose fiction considering it as a kind of business activity which now paid better than others
BUT he had to find a COMPROMISE between puritan ideas and novels. To justify his works he said that his stories were true and that they give a MORAL LESSON to the readers
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V this conception of fiction led him to write novels with more or less the same features.
REALISM - novels were usually presented in the form of diary or autobiography,related in the first-person in order to
increase verisimilitude
LACK OF - not a real plot but a sequence of events unfolding in chronological order and around the same protagonist
STRUCTURE
LACK OF - the characters not develop during the story, they are flat
CHARACTERIZATION
INDIVIDUALISM - only 1 main character (hero o heroine)that stuggle against misfortunes and count on self-reliance for
survival. Character are self-made and found is salvation in himself(puritan heritage)
ISOLATION - usually isolated physically and socially/morally (Crusoe,Moll flanders)
NO SENTIMENTALISM - a very little despair even in the most tragic situation Common sense prevails feelings
MORAL ATTITUDE -prayers and expressions of gratitude to God . Moral conclusion is not implicit in the character’s actions
PICARESQUE - prose autobiographies of a person about his own experience;
ELEMENTS episodic in structure;
some characters are rogues and exploit the society they live in;
direct or indirect critic to society.
THE BOURGEOIS NOVEL

SAMUEL RICHARDSON
He had a natural talent for letter-writing and realized that the theme of certain letter could be material for a complete novel.His novels are essentially moral lessons in the form of love stories full of passions, subjectivism and self-revelation
He write for middle class people and show them how to reach success -> social improvement.There is a contrast between the honest bourgeoisie and the corrupt aristocracy.
FEATURES:
PLOT - novels no longer based on a sequence of fantastic episodes but on a single story made up of
everyday events and emotional situations (a pretext to analyze the flow of feelings and passions)
SETTING - novels no longer set in far off countries or exotic places (# Defoe) but in a domestic
environment, confined to interiors
CHARACTERIZATION -the male characters are middle class men with private lives, family problems and repressed
desire(# defoe’s are picaresque rogues or outcasts)
REALISM - in each novel in the treatment of characters and situations ambiguous mixture of reality and
illusion , realism in the minute recording of mental processes and feelings.
PSYCHOLOGICAL - great attention in given to human behaviour(#defoe) R’s characters are capable of emotional ANALYSIS development. They are round characters
SENTIMENTALISM -his novels are all love stories with happy or tragic ending
MORALISING PURPOSE -(=Defoe) to promote goodness and virtue
TECNIQUE -epistolary form
AND STYLE
RICHARDSON’S EPISTOLARY TECNIQUE AND INFLUENCE:
-the author record the sequences of thoughts and feelings almost moment by moment
-it provided immediacy
-it create a sense of intimacy between characters and readers
-it had the same function as soliloque in drama
-it anticiped the STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS technique of modern fiction
-it became an expression of idividuately
-defects such as prolixity and repetitiveness

THE COMIC EPIC NOVEL
HENRY FIELDING
Aristocratic man, he attack and satirized social and political corruption.
According to Fielding Richardson’s Pamela was characterized by sham (falsa) morality-ipocrisy-ambiguity..so he wrote Shamela with satirical and critic purpose. It is written in epistolary form and it was simply the parody of someone else’s work.
It was only with “Joseph Andrews” that he realized the possibilities of the new literary genre and decided to approach it methodically by first defining and codifing novel rules.He use a preface that contained all the other constituent parts of classical epic with the exeption of metre.(such as fable , action characters..)
THE COMIC EPIC NOVEL:
-fable+ action were no longer grave and solemn but light and ridiculous
-characters were persons of middle or inferior rank so of inferior manners
-sentiment + diction were imbued with the ludicrous (no with sublime)
-thecomic element was very important to ridicule affectation produced by vanity and hypocrisy
To describe comic situations within an epic structure, F. Looked for a model and found it in Cervantes’ Don Quixote,from wich in Joseph Andrews he borrowed the structure of journey,humor heroism,epic tone...
FEATURES:
PLOT -presents a combination of episodes, structure and organized in an organic unity(no longer based on a
simple sequence of events or on a single story)
SETTINGS -are outdoors no longer interiors
CHARACTERIZATION -belong to middle class and lower classes since the greatest diversities between them are the potential for
the truly comic; characters are STATIC
NO -F. Is much more interested in society than in single characters(#Richardson)F. Propose to show not men
INDIVIDUALIZATION but manners not an individual, but a species.
REALISM -novels offer a realistic and genuine picture of 18th century English life
MORALUIZING -there in no idea of puritan punishment.Sexual instinct frankly presented and it isn’t immoral but simply
PURPOSE controlled and directed to good. The moral message is connected with F’s belief in men’s natural
inclination to goodness.He wants to make man realize that virtue is better than vices and that laughter can
be the means to defeat immorality
NO EXAGERATED -there aren’t melodramatic episodes; love is a strong feeling
SENTIMENTALISM
SOCIAL -is made indirectly through the personal experiences of the characters who may for example be robbed by DENUNCIATION highwayman o unjustly sentenced to prison , in order to represent the danger of roads and the corruption
of justice
IRONY - connected with the mock-heroic character of the novels, irony is always broad (sguaiata)
THE ANTI-NOVEL
LAURENCE STERNE
His real gift as a writer was for Comic-Satiric narrative .
Stern anomalous novel derives from the fusion of a new technique with older elements.
FEATURES:
OLDER ELEMENTS - The picaresque form : -the patchwork (collage) of episodes and the apparently limitless length of the novel
-the sense of chance (caso) that dominates the work
- The mock-heroic treatment of certain subjects
- The cast of characters,both high and low
- The conventional biographical form announced in the title of novel
NEW TECNIQUE - The association of ideas A new relationship between time and
- A new sense of time association of ideas is established by Sterne
Sterne anticipated by 2 centuries Bergson’s theory of duration (la durйe) , according to which each person lived moments and experiences which cannot be measured in fixed periods of time, since the mind has its own inner time, distinct from the conventional ones of external world. On the basis of this theory what is important is no longer the chronological sequence of events but what the character feels and thinks:no facts but emotional implications of facts. →This is why S. Uses first person narration and basis his book on an overlapping(straboccare) of memories that the protagonist describes in an apparently illogical sequence of progression (flashforwards=anticipazioni) and regression (flash-back=analessi). →This is also why great attention is paid to the so called “hobbyhorses”(manie) or rather obsessions,passions. Everyone in the book has his “hobbyhorse” since it is not determined by any external reality but rather by an inexplicable inner drive.
STERNE’S ORIGINALITY: break of the rules of the conventional biographical novel ; the narration is interrupted by digressions;
Parent’s behaviour at the moment of conception may influence the foetus (Freudian theories);
The reader is involved by a long series of questions and answers, tragic events are imbued with mock-absurdity, and baffled.
DEFOE
RICHARDSON
FIELDING
STERNE
PLOT
No real plot
Sequence of events
Single story
Unity of episodes
Having an organic unity
Patchwork/limitless
Sequence of events not
following clock time,
autobiography
SETTING
Outdoors
Mainly indoors
The protagonist’s
travelling
Interior/mental time
CHARACTERS
Flat ch.,prototype of
The middle class
Round ch, middle class
people
Ch belonging to different
Social classes, STATIC
Portrayal of a trait/obsession
Of ch.
NARRATIVE
THECNIQUE
1st personal narrator
Epistolary novel
3rd person narrator ,
obtrusive
1st person narrator,
association of ideas
LANGUAGE
Realistic,simple,concrete
moralistic
Realistic,witty,ironic
Abstract,ironic,disgressive
MORAL AIM
Celebration of Puritan
life
Promote virtue
Men’s inclination to
goodness
No moralizing purpose but
Showing the burden of life
SENTIMENTALISM
absent
Typical feature
No exaggerated
absent
IRONY
absent
absent
Irony is witty(pungente)
And always present
Mock-heroic , treatment of
Certain subject