‘English’ is undoubtedly the global language and it is spoken in almost all the countries. It is spoken with various accents and slang all over the world. The English novels reduce the communication gap between the readers. They may be students or others. This paper talks about how and all English novels make a great impact on students and others in terms of their improving the English language skills. English novels play a vital role in spreading colloquial and standard English all over the world. Moreover, this paper tells about the origin, definition and antecedents of English novels. This paper further describes about types of novels.
Every country’s authors have their own way of writing. Some writers may write things based on facts. In the same way, some writers may write things based on imagination. Whatever the basis for them to write, people buy quality books or books written by familiar and remarkable authors. However, we could not say all books are helping the students and the people in terms of learning the English language
According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, novel is “a made-up text story of considerable length in which characters and actions representative of real life are showed in a plot of more or less difficulty”. Another explanation by a nameless author tells that a novel is “a piece of prose narrative of a reasonable length”. Both the definitions highlight the word ‘prose’ meaning the common or ordinary spoken form of language without the presence of poetic rhythmic structure. However, there are some novels written in verse as well, such as Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate and Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegi. The other part of the definition is pertaining to the length. The first definition points out ‘considerable length’ and second definition states ‘reasonable length’ to distinguish the novel’s unique feature as a genre vis a vis genre of short story. The lengths of some novels are similar to the length of short stories and hence a term such as ‘novella’ is often used for shorter novels. The word novel is considered to have been derived from the latin word novellus, Italian word novella (which meant a little new thing) and French word novella. It was writer Boccaccio who first used the term novella storia when he first experimented writing prose. Boccaccio popularized the vogue of collections of novellas with his collection of ten short stories titled Decameron in fourteenth century. However, the meaning of the word novel meant the kind of short stories written and collected by Boccaccio until the 17th century. With the rise in the growth of novels in the 18th century the meaning of the word novel underwent change from short tale in prose to ‘prose narrative of considerable length’ as s stated by The Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Thus, with understanding of the definition of novel, it is relevant to discuss what factors or situations provided opportunities for the rise of the novel in the 18th century
Though English novel as a literary genre gained popularity in the eighteenth century, its beginning can be traced back to 612 BC when world’s oldest literature Epic of Gilgamesh was written. Homer, who lived during the 700 or 800 BC, was the first notable poet or a literary pioneer who wrote the famous Greek epics,. The epics were descriptive stanzas telling stories of human encounters with monsters and accounts of accomplishments of gallant deeds in battles. After the epics became familiar a new form of literature called the romances originating in France in the 12th century. It was popularly known as chivalric romance or medieval romance as well (having flourished in the medieval times or medieval age between 1000 AD to 1450 AD).
Some ideas of the romantic poetry influenced sensibility (Rajimwale, 2004). Jane Austen considered sensibility in women to be revealing weakness the novels, particularly the cult of feelings known as of womanhood and deplored it. She was one writer who offered detailed portrayal of how women’s behaviours were being determined and influenced by inner sensibility. Her novels were all women-centric exlaining the customs, values and mores of the society during her
