THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

This teaching module is focused on the emergence of the NOVEL [E1] [E2] [E3] [I1] [F1] [ES1] [ES2] as a genre in its own in 18th century Britain, which determined the primacy of prose during the Augustan Age. In this period the novel arose in its modern, abandoning the conventions of the previous narrative genres and employing the technique of realistic detail to induce belief. Actually it developed as a prose narrative of considerable length with a well-constructed plot based on a connected sequence of events and involving characters in a specific setting. It dealt with characters and actions representative of real life, portrayed society as it was known to readers, especially to the middle class public the novel was mainly intended for.

The 18th-century novelists were the spokesmen of the middle classes and wrote to please them. Bourgeois readers wanted to read about their own problems and individual experiences. As a consequence the hero of the novel is usually the bourgeois man in his struggle to reach social success.

Many factors determined the rise and diffusion of the modern novel in the Augustan Age:

• the influence of the so-called “philosophical realism” which focused on the individual, who could discover truth through his own personal experiences
• the wider reading public mostly from the middle class, which could now afford many and or expensive books and including more and more women
• The growing importance of the middle classes, which provided a large new audience with a distinctive interest in the portrayal of the individual’s progress and achievement in a social context
• the creation of circulating libraries which increased the demand for novels.

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