Novel is a literary work that presents a prose narrative, usually long, with facts created or related to characters, who experience different conflicts or dramatic situations, over a relatively wide time sequence.
A novel can tell different types of story, which can be called a "deletion novel", "adventure novel", "regional novel", "historical novel", "urban novel", "Indianist novel" etc.
Romanticism is the name given to the literary movement that began at the end of the 18th century and lasted until the middle of the 19th century. Romantic it is what refers to Romanticism as a literary movement. Ex.: Castro Alves was a romantic poet.
Outside the literary field, the term romance took on the meaning of “love affair”, a situation that involves people in love.
Origin of the word novel
The word romance comes from the medieval term “romance” which designated the languages used by peoples under the Roman Empire. These languages were a popular and evolving form of Latin. Popular and folkloric compositions were also called Romance, written in this vulgar Latin, in prose and verse, which told stories full of imagination, fantasies and adventures. Another hypothesis about the origin of the term romance is that it may have originated from “romans” (provencal vocabulary) from which the Latin form “romanicus” originated. It was only in the 18th century that the word novel came to designate the literary genre that is understood today.
Characteristics of the novel
The novel belongs to the narrative genre literature, as it presents a sequence of interconnected facts that occur over a period of time. The main feature of this type of text is the temporal relationship established between the facts, even if are not narrated in the temporal sequence in which they occurred, it is always possible to reconstitute this sequence.
A novel has four elements in its structure: narrator, character, plot and time.
- Storyteller – the one who tells what happened in the story. It is part of the narrative, it is an element of the structure, and should not be confused with the author. The narrator can be one of the characters and relate to others. In this case it's a first-person narrator.
- Characters – are the elements of the text that practice the actions and provoke the development of the story. They are fictional representations of human beings, which can be described from a physical and psychological point of view. The main character in a novel is called the protagonist.
- Plot – is the name given to the sequence of facts in the narrative. The word plot comes from network, which suggests an intertwining of facts. The plot presents situations of conflict and from it the theme is reached, which is the main motif of the text.
- Time – the characters' actions take place in time. In a novel there can be chronological time and psychological time. Chronological time is external time, marked by the passage of hours, days, etc. The facts of the plot can be arranged in a sequence of before and after, that is, in a temporal succession. Psychological time is the inner time that takes place within the characters. Because it is subjective, it cannot be measured or calculated. It is the time of memory, of reflections.
the novel and the short story
THE Novel it is a less comprehensive narrative than the novel, composed of a series of linked units, but articulated around a central character. It is a literary genre whose boundaries are not well defined, often blending with romance and short stories. It features some characters better developed than others. Some play only a small role in the plot. Soap operas gave rise to soap opera.
O Tale it is the shortest and most condensed narrative of all. It focuses around a single character and develops only one story.
See too
- Tale
- Textual genres
- Romanticism
- Plot
- Narrative
- Narrator Types
