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The rise of the novel

The rise of the novel. Prof.ssa Cynthia Tenaglia. WHY NOVEL?. From Novelty Individual vision of Reality. Truth is an individual experience ,always unique and new. REALISM. It tries to portray all the varieties of human experience

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The rise of the novel

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  1. The rise of the novel Prof.ssa Cynthia Tenaglia

  2. WHY NOVEL? • From Novelty • Individual vision of Reality. • Truth is an individual experience ,always unique and new

  3. REALISM • It tries to portray all the varieties of human experience • Descartes and Locke insisted upon the importance of individual experience. • They believed that reality could be discovered by the individual through the senses

  4. The increase of the reading public in the Augustan Age was due to The rise of the novel • Coffee • Houses • Journals the growing importance of the middle class the individual’s trust in his own abilities the practice of reason and self-analysis Most readers were middle-class women They used to borrow books from circulating libraries

  5. The rise of periodical essays • they had a great influence on the novel. • In the first 15 years of the 18th c. writers as Steele and Addison included many character-sketches in their essays, as well as descriptions and discussions of the social scene. In their sketches they mixed descriptions and narrative with the kind of witty dialogue and sense of drama that had characterized the Restoration Comedies.

  6. The spokesman of the middle class. The novelist • The fathers of the English novel: • Samuel Richardson the sentimental novel • Henry Fielding the mock-epic novel • Daniel Defoe the realistic novel • Jonathan Swift the satirical novel

  7. To be understood widely he wrote in a simple polished and elegant way. The novelist’s aim • Realism  not only linked to the life presented, but to the way it was shown. • Speed and copiousness his most important economic virtues since it was the bookseller and not the patron who rewarded him.

  8. The Plot • the social structures of everyday life

  9. Themes Real life Everything that could affect social status The sense of reward and punishment linked to the Puritan ethics of the middle class

  10. The characters Is a particular human type , no more a general human type The Hero A bourgeois, self-made, self-reliant man The mouthpiece of the author The reader is expected to sympathise with him All the characters • have contemporary names and surnames • located precisely in time and space. • struggle for survival or social success • believe in reason

  11. TIME • No more timeless stories to mirror the unchanging moral verities • Precise time • No more restriction in the time of tragedy to 24 hours ( the celebrated UNITY OF TIME) • PAST EXPERIENCES ARE THE CAUSE OF PRESENT ACTIONS

  12. Chronological sequence of events The setting • Detailed descriptions of interiors to make the narrative more realistic • References to particular times of the year or of the day • “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York” • (Robinson Crusoe) • Specific names of towns and streets

  13. The narrative technique

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