The Novel (Cross-posting from EN 201)

Now that we are moving on from the epic to the novel, I thought that I'd put up an entry on this genre.

Here is a brief but limited overview of the novel from a professor at Northern Virginia Community College. Her site emphasizes the novel in English:

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/history/define.htm

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/history/origins.htm
http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/structure/default.htm

For a more detailed and diverse introduction to the novel and the American novel, see this site from the University of North Carolina Pembroke:

http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/lit/amnovel/fall2002/01intro.htm

http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/lit/amnovel/fall2002/syllabus.htm

Do Journey to the West and Genji fit into these definitions? It's true that they are much older than the novels that both professors discuss. It's also true that if we go to the Classics department, we'll find that the novel existed in Greek and Roman literature.

http://ace.acadiau.ca/history/Provencal/Clas34232007.htm

http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/ancientnovel/bibliography.htm

http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/ancientnovel/mscott.htm

Here's a summary of one ancient novel, Heliodorus' Ethiopian Story, which was written in the third century BCE, during the Roman Empire.

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/classics/petron/heliodorus.html

But what about the Chinese novel? Here are some sites from Western and Asian writers alike:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1938/buck-lecture.html

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/chinesenovels.htm

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlit.html

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/931209/roy.shtml

And is Genji a novel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Japanese_literature
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCJAPAN/LIT.HTM
http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/smiley100/excerptsGenji.html
http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/explore/language/q1.html

On the other hand, even though the novel is defined as a *prose* narrative, here is some information about Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, a recent novel in verse:

http://poetry.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_golden_gate
http://www.tetrameter.com/seth.htm