1. The novel is a humanist development, that looks at the complexities of life as lived in the
everyday and does it through telling a story. There is some sort of predicament, perhaps
against other people or social conventions or simply within the mind. Something has to be
worked out and resolved, hopefully. The novel does contain hope or investigates despair.
There are various categories of novel through which these happen. The first recognised
novel in England is Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe.
Click on one to find and relate
Allegory Characters
Comic novels Education
Epistolary Feminist
Gothic Ironic
Magic realism Narrative structure
Narration Naturalism
Picaresque Postmodern
Psychological Readerly
Realism Reflexive
Romance Satire
Science fiction Stream of consciousness
Style Utopian
Writerly
Allegory The surface story, while a good read in itself, is but a means to an end Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
of a deeper meaning. This is common in religious stories because by John Bunyan.
earthly concerns are a distorted reflection of heavenly concerns.
Much concerns the trials of journeying.
Characters These are the actors who form, who must do something or something else, and relate to the others.
It is through characters that a novel moves on. Characters may be given different levels of
credibility, perhaps the lowest in comic novels and the most in in depth psychological moves.
Comic novels These are about people caught in situations which draw out their own Vanity Fair (1848) by
absurdities. The situation may be absurd or the people themselves. William Makepeace
Comic novels can be cruel, and also have an overall pessimistic view Thackeray.
of life. The world is exposed as bizarre and irrationality is
emphasised. People are self-obsessed, or follow drives that seem
beyond rational control. The worlds portrayed lack depth.
Education A character engages with a series of predicaments and learns something about him or herself. The
character may start as challenging the system, and may come to conform, or the passage is the other
way around. The character may start young, and through growing up progress is followed. Life can

2. be presented as very complex through which the growing and self-educating process takes place.
Epistolary These are in the form of letters or emails to and from people. If this is Pamela (1740)
all it is, it can be a rather restrictive format, and to get the full sense and Clarissa (1748) by
of place the letters or emails would have to be long, contrived and Samuel Richardson.
somewhat unconvincing. There is psychological potential. Older
times when middle class people wrote letters to each other in good
English might make better novels, although letters took a while to
arrive. Another alternative to this is novel in the form of diaries.
Feminist Boundaries are challenged in the ordered male world. The A Room of One's
categorising of male and female as binary opposites is undermined, Own (1931) by Virginia
particularly the subordinate female. Alternatively women's Woolf
consciousness is highlighted within the male dominated world, often
a subculture within it, or men too challenge the given power
structures that invade everything from decision making to
relationships.
Gothic This utopian related form of novel is often set in the past and perhaps in some far away land of the
trees, like Transylvania! The place of dilemma is not the location but in the mind, however. The
point about the fantastical world is not to seek perfection but to show the fallacy of seeking
perfection (e.g. everlasting life) or the evil involved in seeking it immorally. These often use
Christian iconography to actually support the general Christian viewpoint from the viewpoint of the
other side.
Ironic It is the difference between how things seem and how they really Gulliver's Travels (1726)
exist. Often this is the expression of views to those intended or by Jonathan Swift.
otherwise existing, and through expressing them creates the real
meaning or stituation desired. It is usually done through creating
absurd or unbelievable narration. However, irony can be located in
the difference between characters' perspectives (situational) showing
that one view is far from the truth or indeed between their limited
perspective and the reader's greater awareness looking down upon
everything (dramatic). Satire is part of irony, as is the comic novel.
Magic realism Events usually are bizarre and even supernatural or mythical. Midnight's Children (1981)
Rationality is undermined for the purpose or examining what may be by Salman Rushdie
more real than the rational. The Western tradition is parodied as a
counter to its cultural imperialism and therefore local third world
ways of thinking are presented. There is alternatively a Western (once
Eastern European) critique of authority and power, making events
produced bizarre. Alternatively other methods challenge the ordered
world though distorting the plot, or the narration is made strange, or
the mind has a high place alongside geographical locations, or the
novel discusses fiction itself 9or a combination of these).
Narrative There needs to be a scene set for action to take place within. The action has to be coherent, so that
structure one thing leads to another. The characters carry out the action, and they need introducing, and they
need to interrelate. The narrative is that underlying structure which runs the story, arranging the
elements, driving the reader through the book. Time is dealt with, usually compressed and
unevenly, and the predicament gives the plot. The plot is the narrative manifested in the
predicments thrown up and resolved. The narrative varies in intensity and level of dominance,
usually becoming the most imposing towards the end as the story comes towards its closure.
Narration This can take place from different points of view. The most neutral, most hidden approach, is the
third person, with the least necessary "intrusion" to describe and present the narrative. This narrator
is like God, all knowing and all seeing, but only revealing so much as necessary so that the story's
life-world has its freedom and independence. However, the narrator is never invisible, and so lends

3. itself to opening up to further possibilities. If the novel is not realistic, if there is a hint of
postmodernism, the narrator must be ulike God. A form of variable invisibility is to make one
character the narrator, so that the narration is located from within the book and by a participant
rather than coming as an external agent. It perhaps takes away the artificiality of the extra eye.
Unlike God, these narrators become fallible. The person who is the central character may be
relatively invisible, as no complication is offered, but when some other character is the narrator, or
more than one person is the narrator, the business of narration itself becomes all the more obvious
and important. There may even be a character who is nothing but a narrator, a strange non-
participant yet placed within the story. This form of narrator is as unreliable as the other characters,
and in fact presents problems if only observing and not participating like some private eye!
Narrators can be far from invisible, either because there is more than one, or because opinions
(especially moral) are being passed. Such a narrator can even emphasise that the whole thing is
fiction, raising the question whether the narrator is the only real element or itself part of the fiction.
Naturalism Influenced by Darwin, this is a form of realism which stresses environment, the family line (and
advantages/ disadvantages) and something of a deterministic outcome.
Picaresque A set up and denial of the romance, particularly a journey in search of Don Quixote (1605-1615)
an ideal, and shows the characters to be foolish and in fact involved by Cervantes; Tristram
in no such thing other than atckling their predicaments as they prove Shandy by Henry Fielding.
too powerful or complex to resolve.
Postmodern A general category for those novels which deny realism, which are The French Lieutenant's
poststructural in language, whose devices draw attention to the novel Woman(1969) by John
as a novel. These novels are writerlyand reflexive. They can show Fowles.
both the creativity and repetitive nature of life. Time and space is
distorted, and characters can inhabit more than one world.
Somewhere rules are broken and ordinary narration is disturbed.
Psychological Either ordinary grammatical introspection can be used or a stream of Jayne Eyre (1847) by
consciousness. The idea is to present at least part of the novel from Charlotte Brontë; Portrait
the mind at a cost of easy to be followednarrative. This may be of a Lady (1881) by Henry
incorporated into a more conventional narrative structure or may James.
overtake it.
Readerly The text is simple to read, and readers consume it without having to Concept in Barthes, R.
engage in the process of word production. It is usually realist. It (1975), S/Z, London:
would stand in binary opposition to "writerly" except that readerly Jonathan Cape.
texts can be subjected to writerly analysis - thus undermining the
structuralist binary opposition and giving a post-structuralist analysis.
Realism Realistic novels are like looking glasses through which the reader So many (!)
sees an ordinary world operate. This produces a story to get lost into, including Pride and
because the only interest is in thecharacters as they work through the Prejudice (1813) by Jane
plot. The stories are one removed from say sociological observations, Austen, and authors like
but with the freedom given to the writer to make it up, but the writer Anthony Trollope, George
is constrained by the ordinary four dimensional universe (except with Elliot.
the ability to truncate time and move across space in the narration: the
characters themselves have to obey normal physical laws).
Nevertheless, as in social anthropology, the "data" can become very
full and rounded. Driving the plot towards resolution often presents
problems because in the ordinary world matters are never quite so
successfully resolved as in many a realist novel. Also the good order
of a realistic novel clashes with the disorder of society; the novelist
should face the same dilemmas as say the social anthropologist who
also faces the problem of the device that turns complexity into
a readable account.

4. Reflexive The fact that here is a novel is highlighted by devices both written The French Lieutenant's
and presented, and this self-conscious, self referential, approach Woman(1969) by John
allows complexity to be better presented. If coherence of the story is a Fowles.
problem, then a reflexive form of narration may be suitable, or a
quality of writing which disturbs the reader who would prefer a good
lost-in-the-book run-through of the plot, impossible in the reflexive
novel.
Romance This form of novel goes beyond ordinary experience and social Portrait of a Lady (1881)
predicaments into make-believe. Something new is being searched for by Henry
in an alternative world beyond familiar circumstances so that the James; Wuthering
novel's purpose is a moral or ideal issue. Nevertheless, the Heights (1847) by Emily
transportation to some idealised world, or going on a somewhat Brontë.
fantastic journey, can lead to disappointment, and its moral outcome.
The characters' ideals can be crushed. The fantastical journey can be a
big illusion or joke, where the reality is a series of mundane
disappointments or repeated errors. European writers tend to present
and then undermine the fantastic, whereas Americans use the fantasy
to explore matters.
Satire A form of comic novel which intends, by lampooning, to be in fact Nightmare Abbey (1818)
constructive in its criticism because it wants things to be better. it's by Thomas Love Peacock
like saying, "If only people or institutions were more sensible or
efficient then society would be improved."
Science A popular novel form which involves some utopian elements. The object is to reflect back on how
fiction we are now, as well as to dream on the possible future where life has more potential. Another
object is to create an environment for moral discussion.
Stream This is a method of writing that tries to locate predicaments in the Ulysses (1922) by James
of mind of the person. Our thoughts jump around and exhibit hopes and Joyce; To the
consciousness fears and the need for instant decisions on all kinds of matters, with Lighthouse (1927) by
intrusions from all over the place. This works very badly with a Virginia Woolf.
neutral third person God-like narrator. The sentences of characters'
thoughts disobey ordinary grammatical rules and may leave their
meaning ambivalent.
Style This concerns narration specifically and the method of writing in The Rainbow (1915) by
general. Each epoch seems to have a predominant style, but so does David Henry Lawrence
each author. It is something of a game of recognition to read a (etc.)
passage and guess the author. There are styles of detachment and
attachment, psychological involvement or neutrality, use of metaphor
or its avoidance, emotional engagement or cool detachment,
complexity/ elaboration or simplicity, and moralising and amorality.
There are even deliberate attempts at different styles in the one book,
say in the postmodern novel.
Utopian This is an extreme form of romantic novel because problems are News from Nowhere (1891)
eliminated. This make-believe intends to point up what could be the by William Morris.
case, with the possibilities of utopia, though sometimes
the characters may not be as perfect as the world they live in and
some utopias may collapse at some point within the story, exposing
them as a sham or unavailable in the real world.
Writerly This kind of novel is usually beyond realism, forcing the reader to Concept in Barthes, R.
generate meaning actively from the given text. It stands at first glance (1975), S/Z, London:
in binary opposition to being readerly. Jonathan Cape.