NOVEL 



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NOVEL 



lOV'EL, an extended narrative in prose, 

 in which there is a definite plot,, more or less 

 involved, and in which an attempt is made 

 truthfully to depict types of character and the 

 manners and customs of the age and country 

 in which the scene is laid. The fact that the 

 novel, while merely a fictitious narrative, is at 

 probable, distinguishes it from the ro- 

 mance, which deals with mysterious or super- 

 natural types. 



All nations, like all children, are fond of 

 . and in the early history of almost every 

 people there^ are evidences of this fondness; 

 bur strange as it may at first thought appear, 

 poetry grew up before prose, and in most na- 

 tions the first stories were in poetic form. The 

 fact that these tales were not set down in writ- 

 ing, but were sung or recited, and were handed 

 down from one bard to another, made the po- 

 etic form far more convenient than prose would 

 have been. It is not true, however, that the 

 ancient times had no prose stories. Egyptians, 

 long before the beginning of the Christian era, 

 delighted in some of the tales which centuries 

 later gave pleasure to Europeans; for example, 

 Cinderella originated in Egypt in very early 

 times. Greece, also, had prose tales, but none 

 of them have come down to us. 



In the Greek provinces in Asia Minor during 

 the early centuries of the Christian era, there 

 grew up a kind of composition which might 

 justly be called romances harrowing tales of 

 youthful lovers who were separated, subjected 

 to all sorts of possible and impossible adven- 

 ture, and finally brought together again; and 

 these old tales had a real influence on some that 

 were produced centuries later in Italy and in 

 England. The most famous of the ancient ro- 

 mances which have come down to us is the 

 Golden Ass of Apuleius, written in Latin. The 

 exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, which peo- 

 ple of all nations have delighted in, comes from 

 this book, but the rest of it is scarcely up to 

 the standard of that tale, 



The interest in this form of literature nover 

 entirely died out, but as with the early peoples, 

 so in the medieval -age, tales in verse were by 

 far more popular than those in prose. Gradu- 

 ally, however, the change came; long poems, 

 which told of the deeds of the great heroes 

 Charlemagne, King Arthur, Roland began to 

 give place to prose romances which dealt with 

 those same personages or with frankly mythical 

 characters. These early attempts at fiction 

 have little resemblance to what is at present 

 known as the novel, for they laid no stress on 

 character delineation, and often the course of 

 the action was so overlaid with moralizing, fine 

 word-painting and description that the plot 

 seemed a minor matter. Chaucer is often con- 

 sidered as a poet only, but he had a very real 

 influence on the development of the novel, for 

 the Canterbury Tales are among the finest ex- 

 amples of medieval fiction. An Italian work 

 and a French work the Decameron of Boccac- 

 cio and the Heptameron of Margaret of Na- 

 varre, also stand out prominently among the 

 books of this period. 



Influence of the Printing Press. It was the 

 printing press which finally determined that the 

 prose rather than the verse tale should survive ; 

 for prose offered decided advantages over verse 

 as a means of expression, and if it might now 

 be preserved in print instead of by word of 

 mouth, what reason existed for holding to the 

 older, more formal manner? Romances of ad- 

 venture became more and more numerous and 

 popular, and the ideas set forth in them became 

 more and more overdrawn and sentimental. 

 Against these romances of chivalry Cervantes 

 directed his masterly Don Quixote, which was 

 so successful that the production of that par- 

 ticular form of fiction practically ceased. Don 

 Quixote was more than a satire on contempo- 

 rary romances, however; it was a vivid por- 

 trayal of character, its hero and his squire, 

 Sancho Panza, ranking among the great char- 

 acters in literature. 



