Until now, people who are far from literary criticism as a science believe that "romance" and "romantic" are close concepts, which means that novels are about love. Of course, this is far from the case. The novel is an ancient, complex and controversial literary genre, which includes Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Palahniuk's Fight Club, and Apuleius's Golden Donkey. But these are, of course, very, very different novels.
Why a novel is called a novel
Oddly enough, the novel itself arose long before they began to call it this particular term. The fact is that the word "romance" goes back to the Old French romanz, i.e. "In the Romance language". The works, which were originally called novels, were, as it were, opposed to the Latin literary model, therefore, forms that, in fact, are not novels at all - historiography, fables, visions, short stories, could also be called so.
But the emergence of the novel as a genre is attributed to antiquity. For example, such are the works "Metamorphoses, or the Golden Donkey" by Apuleius, "Daphnis and Chloe" by Long, "Satyricon" by Petronius.
The novel received its second birth in the Middle Ages, it is called that - a medieval or knightly novel. These include, for example, novels about King Arthur, about Tristan and Isolde, etc.
What can be called a novel
The novel is a very complex and controversial genre, the study of which is still difficult for literary scholars. According to the researcher M. M. Bakhtin, this is because all other genres, except for the novel, have already become established, have their own definite canons and distinctive features, while the novel is still a very mobile, constantly changing genre, which has been in its infancy for many hundreds of years.
Distinctive features of the novel can only be roughly identified. As a rule, it is an epic work of a large form, in the center of which is an individual person. Most often, this person is depicted at a turning point, a crisis moment in his life. Depending on the literary movement to which the novel belongs, the personality can develop (for example, the well-known method of "dialectics of the soul" by Leo Tolstoy), get into non-standard situations and experience adventures (in an adventure or adventure novel), experience love affairs (in a love story).
A novel should be built on conflict - interpersonal, intrapersonal, social, etc.
A unified classification of the types of the novel does not exist to this day, but they are classified according to different criteria. For example, in terms of content, the following are most often distinguished:
- social, - moral descriptive, - cultural and historical, - psychological, - a novel of ideas, - adventure.
Recently, more and more new types of novels have appeared, for example, a novel quest. Many of the novels combine features of both.
Some literary works, which are essentially novels, are classified by the authors as a story, and stories and stories are often written into novels.
