HISTORY OF ENGLISH NOVEL (series 01)

ENGLISH NOVEL – THE BACKGROUND

Story telling is the most ancient mode of entertainment. Every country has its own saga of stories told in different forms. Epic, ballad, anecdote, romance- are all stories.

ELIZABETHAN FICTION

The novel is a comparatively new form of fiction and it is a late growth in literature. It began in Italy and the Italian nouvella soon spread to the rest of Europe all through the course of Renaissance. Ifor Evans places its origin in English in the eighteenth century with the publication of Richardson’s PAMELA in 1740.

However we may trace back the roots of English novel into the romances of sixteenth century. Sir Philip Sidney’s ARCADIA, a romance written about 1580 and published in 1590, had a blend of pastoral and chivalrous. The said work had a principal plot enriched by many episodes. Here and there the chivalrous and the sentimental are interspersed with the comic. But it is through his characters that Sidney marks a progress. He contrasts his virtuous characters with the vicious ones and presents a very bold picture of vice. He enriched the descriptive art of the time by his search for details in the portraits and by his analysis of expression and gestures.

Though ARCADIA had some traits of novel it cannot be called so. At this point it would be proper to distinguish novel from story telling. The novel is a prose work, while most of the early story telling was in verse. Chaucer’s TROILUS AND CRISEYDE has many elements which we would expect in a novel. He accepts and preserves the tragic elements of his theme but he is specially drawn to the study of character.

Verses were used later also as a method of story telling. Scott and Byron wrote verse romances and had the last popular success. It was Scott who showed that prose provides possibilities of width and background to the story which verse cannot. Width and background are two ways in which the novelist distinguishes his art from the art of story teller. Thus the novel can be defined as a narrative in prose based on a story in which the author portrays character and life and analyses sentiments and passions and the reactions of men and women to their environment.

The novel may be the last form of English literature to establish itself but since its beginning in the eighteenth century its success has been huge. The attachment of readers to this form of literature was not surprising. For many it was and it is an indirect satisfaction of the need for a philosophical or moral guidance. For others it is the only outlet to a large experience.

It is quite substantial to mention here that Sidney’s ARCADIA was popular in the eighteenth century and when Richardson called his heroine Pamela he did so in the memory of the virtuous Pamela in Sidney’s romance.

Apart from Sidney a very different kind of contribution was made by John Lyly (1554-1606) whose EUPHEUS(1578) though reduced story to the minimum but was brilliant in the discussion of manners, sentiments and morals. A group of Elizabethan writers wrote for money and tried to follow popular taste. Robert Greene (1560-92) merely popularized the style of Sidney and Lyly. His euphuistic romances are written on a high moral plane. MAMILLIA warned the young man against the seemingly pure love which might take them towards lust. PANDOSTO was used by Shakespeare for THE WINTER’S TALE. Greene developed a manner to describe the low life of London: the thieves, rogues, drabs, their tricks and their victims.

Thomas Lodge wrote a euphuistic romance ROSALYNDE (1590) in Sidney’s manner. The romance was a medley of monologues and sentimental dialogues which inspired Shakespeare for his AS YOU LIKE IT. Thomas Deloney (1543-1602) has been discovered recently as a writer of Elizabethan fiction. Being a weaver by profession Deloney reproduces the spirit, the feelings and the prejudices of the craftsman’s world. His JACKE OF NEWBURY takes us into the great weaver’s shop with its two hundred looms, each worked by one man and a boy to help him, one hundred women carders and two hundred spinsters, hundred and fifty children to pick wool, fifty shearers, eighty rovers and twenty fullers.

Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) was perhaps the first Elizabethan writer who experimented the picaresque in his THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER. The said work is also the nearest approach to realistic novel. Therefore Elizabethan fiction strikes us as a series of attempts but compared with Elizabethan drama it was just a beginning.