1. novel of incident
episodic action dominant—not plot unity or character
The Three Musketeers
Robinson Crusoe
Sherlock Holmes
2. novel of character
emphasis on character, not on plot unity
3. realistic novel
19th century novels that focus on middle class ethics and life. Slice of life writing that imitates actual day-to-day action and drama. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
4. romance novel
“The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it was written. The Romance in lofty and elevated language, describes what has never happened nor is likely to.” Extravagant characters, remote and exotic places, highly exciting and heroic events, passionate love, or mysterious or supernatural experiences. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne; Edgar Allen Poe’s fiction.
5. Bildungsroman
A novel that follows a young person to maturity.
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
6. historical novel
A novel that examines a particular historical period and features actual characters and also fictional characters that carry the plot.
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (French Revolution)
7. epistolary novel
A novel told through letters, emails, texts, etc.
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
84 Charring Cross Road, James Roose-Evans
Lady Susan, Jane Austen
8. picaresque novel
A novel that tells the life story of a rogue or rascal of low degree. Tends to be episodic, contain adventure, is often satiric of social classes. Realistic, focusing on petty details; uninhibited expression, 1st person narrative, realistic style; character does not develop. Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
9. Roman a Clef
A novel about actual persons in the guise of a fictional character.
Primary Colors, Joe Klein (the Clintons and ’96 campaign);
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (Frank Lloyd Wright)
10. eponymous novel
A novel that features a protagonist for whom the novel is named:
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
11. grotesque fiction
Contains bizarre, incongruous, ugly, unnatural, fantastic, abnormal (formal distortion) elements or characters. Usually characters or subjects. It is an outgrowth of the author’s interest in irrational, cosmic order, humans’ place in the universe, and the merging of comic/tragic aspects of human experience. Characters are often physically or spiritually deformed. Flannery O’Conner or Franz Kafka
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12. metafiction
A work of fiction, a major concern of which is the nature of fiction itself. Many modern novelists (J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer) write novels that contain, as one of their structural and thematic dimensions, a testing of fiction itself.
13. antinovel
A contemporary movement that rejects traditional novelistic conventions. It is the literal description of experience that has not been abstracted, internalized, or anthropomorphized through metaphor. Novelists want to represent reality without imposed interpretations. No social or moral superstructure. No order. An antinovel experiments with fragmentation and dislocation supposing the reader will reconstruct reality from the disordered pieces of direct experience. Neutral, flat style (Alain Robbe-Grillet, best known novelist)
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