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III. English Novels of Realistic
Tradition
1.The Rise of English Novels
Novels, as a new form of
fiction, rose in the 18th century in England, which actually drew a lot from
earlier imaginative narratives, such as FOLK TALES, FABLES, MYTHS, EPIC
POETRY, ROMANCE, FABLIAUS, NOVELLE etc. For example, PICARESQUE NOVEL,
appeared in the 16th century first in Spain and then in England, is a kind
of story told in the first person by a roguish servant, who passes from
master to master and exposes both his own rascality and the seamy side of
the fashionable life of his time. Many episodes are narrated as that in the
fabliaux and novella, but they are threaded together by the record of the
rogue hero. This type has changed with time, especially the loss of the
servant element, and reached its peak in English in Thackeray’s Barry
Lyndon. As another contributor, drama, also had cultivated the sense of
a well-knit plot, of effective situation, and of the interplay of character
and action-all elements that are transferable to novels. The material
between the two species interchanges a lot with each other. In the time of
Shakeapeare, the playwrights frankly dramatized familiar stories from
history, romance, and novella, and occasionally the story of popular play
was retold in prose narrative. Many successful novels appear later on the
stage and not a few successful plays are “novelized.” Many of the elements
of effective story telling remain common to both novel and play.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, novel begun to
dominate the stage of imaginative entertainment. Daniel Defoe and Samuel
Richardson are always considered as the two realistic founders of the modern
English novel, who totally broke away from the convention. They never drew
materials from legend or histories but from the real social life in England.
The heroes or heroines are also changed from nobles and immortals to common
earthly men in low class. Defoe constructs his stories mainly upon the
personality of the protagonist whose life threads the plot. Defoe achieves
his realism by an expert selection of matter-of-fact details, which creates
a circumstantial effect like that of a modern newspaper report. However,
Defoe only describes the external realistically without a deep insight into
character.
Richardson’s Pamela compensates Defoe’s novel for this
defect. In his works, Richardson besides achieving a large unity of action,
a sharply structure around his central figure with involvement of other
characters’ motives and social conditions, Richardson also deals with
specifically the inner life of his characters and stresses passion and
sentiment that has become traditional in novel. Richardson often degenerated
sentiment into sentimentality and he deliberately and emphatically dwelt on
the emotional and pathetic elements in his narrative. In this way, he
successfully draws from his readers the greatest possible lachrymose
response.
Their followers, such as Fielding who set up the theory of
realism, Smollett, Sterne, Goldsmith, also contributed a lot to novels’
development.
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