Despite persistent predictions of its death, the novel remains the single most popular and adaptable genre . . .

Bakhtin on the novel

Classical theory on voices in the novel

Origins or proto-genres of the novel (or fiction)

• the Epic
   

• the Romance
   

• Spoken Tales (cf. short story)
   

• Picaresque novels of Renaissance Spain < Maqama of Arab literature

  (Picaro = rogue, wanderer, trickster figure)

Early European novels or proto-novels:

Francois Rabelais (1494-1553), Gargantua et Pantagruel (series of 5 novels), revived by Bakhtin esp. as “carnival”

Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1605, 1615

John Bunyan (1628-1688), The Pilgrim's Progress 1678

Not real characters but allegorical symbols: Christian, Evangelist, Mr. Legality, Giant Despair

(also settings: King's Highway, village of Morality, Vanity Fair, Hill of Difficulty, Celestial City)

extremely popular in English Christian homes until past century or two

physical journey > spiritual journey, conversion experience, personal transformation (cf. Robinson Crusoe)

plain language but extensive sentences as in Crusoe

both Puritan writers > middle-class voice

Early English novels 

Daniel Defoe (1659-1731), Robinson Crusoe (1719), Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724)

Samuel Richardson 1689-1761, Pamela, 1740; Clarissa 1748

Henry Fielding, 1707-54. Tom Jones, 1749

First American novels late 1790s

19^th century: novel as national expression

England: Austen, Thackeray, Dickens, Brontes, Trollope, Hardy

Russia: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov

France: Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Dumas

USA: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe

20^th century: novel as international Modernism + many other developments

Appeals or attractions of the novel

depiction of whole social world (setting)

numerous recognizable voices, identities, or characters (characterization + viewpoint)

journey, conflict, transformation > resolution (plot, narrative, story)

identification with protagonist or perspective (viewpoint + characterization)

moral identification and resolution with emotional satisfaction or vicarious suffering

for veteran readers like myself . . .

Dialogue of worlds and voices meeting in novel may transcend ethics or conventional good-evil morality; interest relocates to formal accomplishment and representation of complete world