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Historical Fiction
Novel
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Historical Fiction
Novel
In medieval Europe (1300's), the Decameron, by Bocaccio, and the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer were popular works of fiction. The Arab world has its 1001 Arabian Nights. All these works are very humorous tales designed to entertain, and they also tell a lot about life in those societies and about human nature.
The novel is considered to be born with Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes. Don Quixote is a deluded old man who thinks he is a knight on a noble quest. He thinks a tavern waitress is his fair damsel, and that windmills are giants. Cervantes doesn't make Don Quixote totally ridiculous, however, although much of what he does is certainly funny. You wind up wishing the other characters could be more like Don Quixote, who in many ways is a better person leading a more noble life.
In its classic form, a novel tells the story of a hero or heroine, who in the course of the novel resolves a conflict. A conflict is a struggle between two opposing forces.
Characters can struggle against:
In more modern fiction, the hero is often an anti-hero, someone who either is evil or who doesn't take any action to change his or her fate. Someone like the killer in Edgar Allen Poe's Tell-Tale Heart, for example, or the really awful men who are the main characters in John Fowles' novels, like The Collector or The Magus.
Some novels revolve around an adventure (like Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson). In a picaresque novel, the main character has lots of adventures, many of them funny. The first English novel, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, about the wild and crazy love life of a young boy, is of this kind. A great picaresque novel written recently is Water Music, by T. Coraghessan Boyle. This novel features the amazing and hilarious adventures of a white man who travels down the Niger River in Africa, and about his fiancee who has her own adventures at home in Scotland.
Historical fiction uses past events to tell universal truths about life, or uses fiction to show people what life was like in another time. One example is Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, written after the Civil War. The author put his main character in that war to tell a tale of courage and cowardice. Other times, the author wants the readers to learn what it was like to live in another time and place. A wonderful series of historical novels is the Kristin Lavransdatter series by Sigrid Undsett, set in thirteenth-century Norway. It tells the tale of a young woman who falls in love with a difficult and unusual man, and how they together lived their lives and served their families, their God, and their King.
A short novel (usually under 100 pages) is called a novella or a novelette.Anything under 40 pages or so is generall considered to be a short story.
Short stories have to tell their entire story in just a few pages! They have to quickly and skillfully clue you in to who the character is and where he or she is in life and on the planet. A good short story has a memorable first line or first paragraph, that hooks you in and makes you curious to know more. Here is the first line of "Gorilla, My Love", by Toni Cade Bambarra: "That was the year Hunk Bubba changed his name." Who is Hunka Bubba? Why did he change his name? That line makes you want to read more.
Short stories tend to focus on one conflict or one insight the character gets; they tend to take you through a short period in a character's life. Short stories tend to be more intense than a novel: a conversation or an action and its effects is usually the focus.
O. Henry is considered a classic short story writer. His stories are very effective: heart-warming, honest and real. Some are very funny ("The Ransom of Red Chief", for example). H.H. Munro, or Saki, is also considered an influential and important short story writer. Many famous novelists were also wonderful short story writers: Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury in Science Fiction; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway in Fiction; Edgar Allan Poe and Agatha Christie in Mystery.
Fiction can be told from many points of view. Usually, there is a narrator who tells the story.
In third-person narratives, the characters (or people in the story) are referred to as "he" and "she"; its as if the story was told by someone on the outside watching all the characters. Sometimes this watcher, or narrator, is omniscient, which means they know all and can go anywhere. Many novels are written this way, with the narrator moving from person to person, place to place, room to room; knowing more than any one character and telling it all to you! So you know stuff about a character even before the other characters do!
A few novels are told in the second person: "you". The story might tell you things like: "You see her walk in the room. You take her hand. Together you swirl through the room to the beat of the music." This is much rarer; it is pretty difficult to do well! Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big Cityis told this way: "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning" is its first line.
Some books are told in the first person: "I". It's as if the person who experienced the story is telling it to you. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Catcher in the Rye,, by J. D. Salinger, are both told in the first person ("I"). These first-person story tellers can be either reliable, in that they see the truth, or unreliable, which means you can't trust their version of the events. Unreliable narrators tell the story the way they see it, but their problems or lack of information keep them from knowing and/or telling the whole, real truth of the story. Did you ever have a friend who tells you about a fight he or she had, and you just know that you are not getting the whole story? Your friend, at least for that story, was an unreliable narrator!
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The tale of Genji is "loosely based on [Murasaki's] years as lady-in-waiting to the Empress Akiko. It is a very long novel about complications in the life of a fictitious prince called Genji. Like many of the court ladies, Shikibu was a master at observing the daily activities and attitudes of upper class society.
The tales of Prince Genji, known as 'the Shining Prince,' became popular from the moment of its release. It was meant to be read aloud...the novel has been translated into many
languages and been studied and discussed by many scholars."
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"A fifty year old `lean bodied' and `thin faced' rural gentleman called
Alonso Quijano lives in a modest household with his niece and a
housemaid in a country village in La Mancha in Spain. He becomes
obsessed with books of chivalry, selling many acres of cornfield to
purchase the volumes. `From little sleep and too much reading his brain
dried up and he lost his wits'. `He had a fancy ... to turn knight errant
and travel through the world with horse and armour in search of
adventures' with the purpose of `redressing all manner of wrongs'. He
found some old rusty armour and mounted his old hack horse to seek
adventures; calling himself `Don Quixote de La Mancha' and his nag -
`Rocinante'." (plot summary is fromDon Quixote, the Story)
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Tom Jones, continued ...
English teachers at Crossroads School think this book covers almost every human characteristic: lust, greed, lies, cheating. The book has them all, along with a character to represent each trait. This book was the first English novel ever written. buy the book at Amazon or Read it online
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