...NOVELS What is strange is that this prejudice against novel reading has persisted, to some extent, even in the modern world including India which has borrowed the novel form from the West. Students, particularly, are not encouraged to read novels. Parents and teachers seem to think that youngsters read fiction mainly to kill time, are likely to get addicted to it as to a drug, and derive from it a pleasure which makes them reluctant to apply themselves to serious study. It must be admitted that this prejudice is justified, as far as bad novels are concerned. Today the railway book stalls and circulating libraries are flooded with detective novels, crime fiction and thrillers. The appeal of the majority of such novels is based on plot, usually absurd and improbable, and the excitement of the lower human instincts. They are totally devoid of characterization, insight into human nature, and significance. Reading such novels is not only a waste of time but exposing oneself to dangerous influences. Of course, there are some good detective novels such as those by Canon Doyle and there can be no objection to reading some of them, but it should be realised that the value of even good detective novels is that of entertainment, and that they do not contribute to understanding of life. But what objection can there be to reading good novels? The novel today is an important form of literature, and several distinguished writers like Tolstoy, Wells, E. M. Forster, William Golding and Lawrence...
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...A novel is a long prose narrative that describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story. The genre has historical roots in antiquity and the fields ofmedieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, theplot, the relation to reality, the characterization, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced to literary prose in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. ------------------------------------------------- Definition[edit] Gerard ter Borch, young man reading a book c.1680, the format is that of a French period novel. | Madame de Pompadourspending her afternoon with a book, 1756 – religious and scientific reading has a differenticonography. | The fictional narrative, the novel's distinct "literary" prose, specific media requirements (the use of paper and print), a characteristic subject matter that creates intimacy, and length can be seen as features that developed with the Western (and modern) market of fiction. The separation of the field of literary fiction from the field of historical narrative fueled the evolution of these features in the last 400 years...
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...The novel ‘Dream of Red Mansions’ was written by Xueqing Cao, which is one of the four most Famous Classical Chinese Novels. The author of this book, who has a preliminary democratic ideology, demonstrates profound criticism through this book, including the darkness of bureaucracy, the corruption of the feudal aristocracy, even strict social hierarchy system of the real society in that period of time. On the contrary, the novel praises the real love between two main characters who against the feudal ethical code and have enough courage to find their own happiness. In the following, I will evaluate this fiction from the author, brilliant achievements, genre and classical characters of this book, especially demonstrate some difference from other books. The author of this book, Xueqing Cao, is a great writer and poet of the Chinese Qing Dynasty. He was born in an aristocratic family, so he had a happy childhood. But his father was dismissed and arrested when he was 10 years old, and all possessions were confiscated. Thus, Xueqing Cao felt deeply about inconstancy of human relationships and more clearly understood the darkness of the social system. Although he is living in poverty, he is good at writing and painting. According to his own real experience to be artistic, he was dedicated to engaging in the writing and editing of the novel " Dream of Red Mansions". However, due to the poverty he had no money to see a doctor, so he did not complete the novel at the time of his death...
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...Essay on Novel Published by admin at 12:41 pm under Sample Essays Tim Winton’s novel, ‘That eye, the sky’ is a powerful exploration of such themes as loneliness, isolation and maturity within the context of Australian family life and landscape. These themes, which come to represent serious and grave difficulties for the protagonists, are explored somewhat differently across the mediums of film and text. John Ruane’s cinematic interpretation of Tim Winton’s text provides a useful and constructive alternative perspective of these thematic difficulties. The Australian Family depicted in ‘That eye, the sky’ is the quintessential Australian country family. The depiction of the Flack family in the novel describes the stereotypical image of the Australian family. More…They live in a country cottage with chickens in the yard, holes in the asbestos wall sheeting and Sam Flack, the head of this house, drives a Ute. This description places the family in a stereotypical Australian place. The narrator in the novel, Ort, provides the reader with an insight into life as a member of the Flack family. For example, the reader can understand what Ort is thinking, when he… This example shows us the thought process that Ort goes through and the reader views his perspective of his family. In the film, the casting of Jamie Croft as Ort is believable and appears as one would imagine. Not only is the image of Ort believable but also how and what he thinks provides the viewer with a greater insight...
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...A. Hare English 46B May 18, 2012 Final Question 1 Victorian novels Emma by Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Middlemarch by George Elliot and early twentieth century novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf all portray and emphasis a heighten sense of awareness in their societies, social lives and love. The evolution of main characters in each of the novels shows transition between the writers and characters through close observations of social interactions. Victorian novels more often idealized a sort of portrait of love and luck that wins out towards the end; rewarding virtue and that wrongdoer are punished. This however was to be intended to improve the moral nature of one’s heart. Twentieth century writers had and a slightly different view of that of Victorian writers in which embodied a more modern period and more modern view on life. The concepts of love in each of these four distinct novels are apparent in the way that each are craftily structured. Jane Austen’s Emma use of free indirect style for example on page 327-28 which marks a crucial moment in the novel where the main character Emma has a crucial realization “with insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of everybody’s feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody’s destiny”; the theme in which this novel centered around a number of marriages and social status. In gaining social advancement was especially important for women if they stood a chance for improving...
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...The English novel is an important part of English literature. This article focuses on novels, written in English, by novelists who were born or have spent a significant part of their lives in England, or Scotland, or Wales, or Northern Ireland (or Ireland before 1922)]. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to novels in other languages or novelists who are not primarily British where appropriate. Portrait of Samuel Richardson by Joseph Highmore.National Portrait Gallery, Westminster, England. Contents [hide] 1 Early novels in English 2 Romantic period 3 Victorian novel 4 20th century 5 Survey 6 Famous novelists (alphabetical order) 7 See also 8 References Early novels in English[edit source | editbeta] See the article First novel in English. The English novel has generally been seen as beginning with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722),[1] though John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) are also contenders, while earlier works such as Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and even the "Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have been suggested.[2] Another important early novel is Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, which is both a satire of human nature, as well as a parody of travellers' tales like Robinson Crusoe.[3] The rise of the novel as an important...
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...ISP ESSAY How one lives their life relies a great deal on perspective. Perspective is either the key to happiness, or the route to misery. The novels Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen both display how ones perspective determines their path and ultimate outcome in life. Although the novels deal with two completely different styles of families they do share many common themes concerning the aspect of perspective. Both the Vakeel and the Berglund families struggle with the trials and tribulations of everyday life, however they approach it differently due to their past experiences, as well as their personal values and morals. This allows for an overall completely different experience for the characters. Firstly, the characters perceive the issue of family relationships differently, as one family is close knit, whereas the other is torn and distant. Secondly, each novel displays the character’s struggles with finding personal freedoms and breaking away from the traditional views of society. Lastly, the characters in the novel deal with finding their true self and the person they are meant to be. Therefore both authors incorporate the themes of family relationships, personal freedoms and self discovery into their thrilling novels to empathize the power that perspective has on one’s life. In Family Matters, the relationships within the Vakeel family are strong due to an abundance of communication, respect, and equality. As a result the members...
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...Independent Study Novel Sarah Driedger The Droughtlanders Part A 1. Carrie Mac is an award winning author who wrote the Droughtlanders series. Carrie is a writer, storyteller and an artist. She’s written countless books, many that are award winning her very first book ‘The Beckoners’ won the Arthur Ellis YA Award, is a CLA Honour book, and is being adapted for film. Carrie is able to hold the interest of many teenagers with her griping novels. 2) The novel ‘The Droughtlanders’ is set in a futuristic world where disease and death are kept outside city walls and is spread by the Droughtlanders- people who try to survive on the parched land between the keys. The characters in the novel want to destroy the keys so that all the Droughtlanders may have a chance at living without the fear of death. The main issues the characters face in this story are the erupt changes of lifestyle that they must undergo in order to survive. Also they seek approval from their family this proves to be an issue when nothing they do makes them happy so they push themselves to their limit and at the same time uncovering new traits about themselves. 3. Character | Physical Description | Psychological Description | Motivation | Static or Dynamic + Proof | Eli | He is the smaller twin of Seth but becomes more physically fit as he works in the circus with the Droughtlanders. Tan skin, darker hair then Seth. | He is very timid and shy. Very wimpy. But after escaping to the Droughtland, Eli...
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... Her father was a factory worker and her mother was a stay at home housewife. She grew up being raised in a Pentecostal religion household, where she wrote sermons for her church when she turned six. Winterson liked to read a lot, there were only six books in her household, which included the bible, Malory’s Morte d’ Arthur, but reading wasn’t approved unless it was the bible. When she turned 16 years old, she came out as a lesbian and decided to go out and live on her own. She enrolled herself into an all girls grammar school and later she went to Oxford University where she studied and read English. When she moved to London she wrote her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which won the 1985 Whitbread prize. Most of Jeanette’s novels are...
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...Blaze hears George, but he can’t see George. George had planned a risqué plan for the both of them to pull off; that was before he died. In Blaze, Clayton Blaisdell Jr. otherwise known as “Blaze” has remarkable guise when he kidnaps baby Joey, and runs from place to place with him. The FBI is trying to get baby Joey back to his opulent lifestyle and away from Blaze. Eventually, the FBI tracks down Blaze and baby Joey and barely gets baby Joey out safely but killing Blaze. While reading this novel, I questioned some characters upbringing, evaluated some characters lives, and made connections to Blaze. Throughout this novel it was clear that Blazes friend George shared numerous traits with me. One way I felt connected to George was that we both are aggressive. He did not believe in taking the nice route, he thought intimidation was key. Blaze would talk to George, or more his figment of George for help and advice with baby Joey and George would usually be upset with blaze, especially when in came to the baby. “I’m not talking about taking him back!” “What do you think he is, a fuckin’ returnable bottle? I’m talking...
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...Independent Novel Study: Wave Part A: Plot 1. The point of view in which the story is written is of Sam and Beth Brooks, two siblings who have been separated at Christmas in 2004, with Sam on vacation away from home and Beth forcibly staying at university for a swim meet that she must attend. I believe that the author chose to write from these perspectives because both characters are greatly affected greatly by the main plot, though dealing with it in two different situations. Sam is experiencing the entire story from Phuket, Thailand, where they are hit with a tsunami. Beth was in New York at her dorm, first learning about the tsunami from her boyfriend, Tad. Both characters have different feelings about what has happened, and we, as the readers, get to hear both perspectives. 2. The story takes place on the one hand in Phuket, Thailand during Christmas break of 2004, and on the other side of the world in New York, where Beth's dorm and university are located. The difference that the setting makes is that if most of the characters were not located in Thailand where the tsunami happened, and majority of the story did not take place there, we would only be privy to secondary information of what was happening. Beth was only able to watch the huge tsunami unfold on television, being an unbelievable 27-hour flight away from the wave. Sam having been in Phuket even before the tidal wave hit was a primary witness...
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...NOVEL AS A LITERARY FORM The eighteenth century is the century of the prose as well as rise of novel. The novel emerged as a new and significant mode of writing, becoming more than means of providing entertainment, it become a means of radical questioning that would lead a change in entrenched attitudes. THE NOVEL AS FICTION As against imaginative fictional, the novel is a realistic form. It presents that segment of life and society in more or less approximate terms, which has been seen and experienced by the actual men and women of a particular period. The concept of mirroring or reflecting an object is more significant in the case of the novel than it would be in the case of poetry or dreams. While reading a novel, readers are transformed to a different world with its own laws, rules and regulation. Towns and villages, markets, streets and pathways hold out as actual places with their distinct coloring and feel. Not only the characters are shown as speaking with their own mannerisms but ordinary information about their appearances, conditions, opinions and state of mind also imparted by the author in his or her voice. The remarks of the author meant clearly for sharing with the reader, lend authenticity to the description in novel and make the reader accept it as truthful account. This leads to a state in which the reader is strongly drawn into the ethos of the world of the novel. While poetry and drama are also invented and imagined, they cannot be equated with...
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...´ ´ ETAT PRESENT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CATHOLIC NOVEL? TOBY GARFITT MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD The idea of a specifically Catholic novel arose during the nineteeth century. The often anti-Catholic agenda of the philosophes and the libertine novel had been counterbalanced by writers such as Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who sought to reveal God through the wonders of the natural world. But it was Chateaubriand’s Atala (1801) that inaugurated the new genre of the Catholic novel as a riposte to the dechristianization associated with the Revolution. Chateaubriand was more partial to the epic, however, and in this he was followed by Bonald, who appreciated the scope that the epic afforded for the depiction of ‘le merveilleux chretien’, including angels.1 An interesting ´ twentieth-century representative of this tradition is Patrice de La Tour du Pin, ´ whose three-volume Somme de poesie (1946 – 63) charts the progression from lyrical poetry in a neo-Romantic vein, through a process of kenosis or selfemptying (which involves a shift towards prose in the second volume), to the ´ ´ creation of a new theopoesie.2 Epic poetry continued to offer a means of exploring religious and scientific ideas throughout the nineteenth century (Quinet, Hugo, Bouilhet), but there was already a backlash by the 1820s, and, as the novel rapidly established itself as the major literary genre, a number of Catholic sub´ genres developed. The ‘Avant-propos’ to Balzac’s Comedie humaine expresses nostalgia...
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...The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time is written by Mark Haddon. This is a murder mystery novel with strange feeling. Christopher is fifteen years old boy, who is the narrator and detector in the story, but suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome diseases. He is intelligent in math but hardly know something about human beings and their emotions. It’s good to learn something new from others and that feeling I found in Christopher because even though he has difficulty in understanding emotions but he is always curious to know what it mean. In the novel he took help from Siobhan to draw different faces and what they meant and how people react in such situation. Even he doesn’t know why people tell lies and takes lot of time in thinking what the metaphor means. Christopher makes comparison between human beings and animals and though he loves animals. It’s true that animals are honest and never say lie in their life. But it doesn’t mean that people are saying lie by using metaphor and by lots of talking without using any words. For example: we had a real pig of a day. He think that people said lie because there is no relationship between pig and a day as also known as not correlated to each other. I think it doesn’t mean that people are telling lie if they doesn’t share any relation, but different people think differently and it might confusing and goes in opposite directions. When he finds that his father was crying alone in the living room, but he didn’t understand that his...
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...This essay presents a brief overview of the development of the nineteenth century English novel. Transition and Transformation: One could be forgiven for believing that the words ‘fiction’ and ‘novel’ mean one and the same thing. The main reason for this confusion is that both of them have a common denominator; they both tell a story. In the novel, we have the theatre of life and for over two centuries it has been the most effective agent of the moral imagination. Though it has never really achieved perfection in form and its shortcomings are numerable, nevertheless one experiences from it not only the extent of human variety, but also the value of this variety. Fiction existed right from the first time man told a story and thus it is in this respect only, that it is similar to the forerunner of the novel as we know it today, which is any work of fiction in England written before 1670. Novelists express their conscious conclusions about life as they experience it and these manifest themselves not only in the characters they create and their interaction with each other, but also in the way they make them react or respond to the various situations in which they find themselves and in what they say within these situations. They are relatively free to choose their material, but their conclusions about life and the nature of their novels are dependent on their innate personality, as this affects not only the way in which they present their characters, but also our own understanding...
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