Origins and Rise Of The Novel

What is novel?

The novel owes its name to Italian word novella meaning a tale or a piece of news.

The novel is called roman in French and is derived from the word romance.

Origins and Rise Of The Novel

There are two ancestors of the novel.

  1 Epic Is one.

Epic is a long narrative poem about the deeds of brave warriors and heroes who are “larger than life”.

Eg The Ramayna, The Mahabharata.

The epic poem has a heroic story to narrate and incorporates within it the myth, the legend , folk tales as well as history.Epic poems deal with history of a country*a clan.

In the western tradition there are two types of epics

1] Primary

2] Secondary/Literary

1] Primary epics by and large belong to the oral tradition.

 Eg Homers Ilaliad and the Odyssey

2] Secondary or literary epics belong to written form of literature.

Eg  Milton’s  Paradise lost.

2 The Romance is the second source of the modern novel.

The romance was an adventure story usually of love or chivalry and it was written in verse.

Romance is primarily a European form and about characters that live in a courtly world.

The word romance itself is suggestive of the elements of fantasy, improbability and extravaganza, as well as love, adventure and the marvelous and it was written in verse.

However it came to be written in prose.

Cause facilaitating the flourish of novel in 18^th century England.

1.The industrial revolutionhad taken palce andpeople had more time of leisure that could be deicated to reading and writing.

2.

Industrialisation led to tremendous improvement in printing technology, as a result more books/novels could be printed and that too easily.