Portal:Novels

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Novels Portal

A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story (of something new)", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance". Such "romances" should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love. M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also commonly called novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of the vernacular classic Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era. Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.

Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebooks. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels. While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Featured article - show another

This is a featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia..

Halo: Contact Harvest is a military science fiction novel by Joseph Staten. Released in October 2007, it is the fifth novel based on the Halo video game franchise. Staten was a longtime employee of Bungie, the developer of the Halo video game series; he directed the cut scenes in the video games and is a major contributor to Halo's storyline. He set out to write a novel that appealed to gamers, as well as those who had never read a Halo novel.

Set in 2525, twenty-seven years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, the novel tells the story of the United Nations Space Command's first encounter with the alien collective known as the Covenant on the colony world of Harvest, and the beginning of the long war that follows. The novel is an ensemble piece, following human and alien characters. The protagonist is a young Marine, Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, who also appears in the Halo video games. Upon release, the book was generally well received and became a New York Times bestseller in its first week. Critics pointed to the novel's success as a sign of the increasing importance of story in video games. (Full article...)

Selected novel quote

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

Moby-Dick

More selected quotes

Did you know...

...that author Ken Kesey taught a course at the University of Oregon where he and thirteen students collaboratively wrote Caverns?
...that Beth Groundwater's A Real Basket Case was nominated for the Best First Novel Agatha Award in 2007?
...that the 1919 novel Lad: A Dog (pictured) is a fictionalized account of the life of author Albert Payson Terhune's real life rough collie Lad?

More Did you know facts

More...

General images

The following are images from various novel-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Woodcut of a fairy-circle from a 17th-century chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 2First edition of Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers (1870) (from Novel)
Image 3Harlequin novels (from Romance novel)
Image 4A modern chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 5Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711). (from Novel)
Image 6Novelization of chapter 8 of the film series Les Vampires (1915–16) (from Novelization)
Image 7The frontispiece of a late 18th-century chapbook edition of Voltaire's The Extraordinary Tragical Fate of Calas, depicting Jean Calas being broken on the wheel (from Chapbook)
Image 8Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (from Novel)
Image 9J. K. Rowling, 2010 (from Novel)
Image 10A nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss-French painter Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre depicting a scene from Longus's Daphnis and Chloe (from Romance novel)
Image 11One of the most influential novels on the picaresque genre was The Golden Ass by Apuleius, which he published sometime in the 2nd century AD. (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library) (1345 illustration). (from Picaresque novel)
Image 12Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladivostok, 1995 (from Novel)
Image 131915 novelization of the original 1904 play Peter and Wendy (from Novelization)
Image 14Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction (from Novel)
Image 15Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) (from Novel)
Image 161474: The customer in the copyist's shop with a book he wants to have copied. This illustration of the first printed German Melusine looked back to the market of manuscripts. (from Novel)
Image 17"Oh Edward! How can you?", a late-19th-century illustration from Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen, a pioneer of the genre (from Romance novel)
Image 18Chinua Achebe, Buffalo, 2008 (from Novel)
Image 19A light novel bookstore in Macau (from Light novel)
Image 20Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1741) (from Novel)
Image 21Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines. (from Adventure fiction)
Image 22King Kong (1932) novelization of King Kong (1933) (from Novelization)
Image 23The chapbook Jack the Giant Killer (from Chapbook)
Image 241719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe (from Novel)
Image 25The picaresque genre began with the Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) (Pictured: Its title page) (from Picaresque novel)
Image 26Image from a Victorian edition of Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) (from Novel)
Image 27Dan Brown (from Novel)
Image 28Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, pp. 70–71 (1769) (from Novel)
Image 29Richard Head, The English Rogue (1665) (from Novel)
Image 30Statue of Ostap Bender in Elista (from Picaresque novel)
Image 31Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book (François Boucher, 1756) (from Novel)

Subcategories

Novel categories

Featured content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Novels}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.