The novel

Mr. Darcy

Everyone knows what novels are. They're any fictional narrative in prose that exceeds 50,000 words or so.

Except... what about prose romances? Is the Lancelot-Grail a series of five novels, or does its mythic past setting and supernatural elements make it something else, closer to epics?

What I'm getting at is, isn't there a prescriptive definition as well as the descriptive one above, wherein the writer ought to make it realistic? I think in this sense the novel takes the place of comedy. Classics poems of the comedy genre give us a humor-slanted window into mundane life in Classical Athens, 17th century England, the France of Louis XIV, etc. Novels like Don Quixote or those of Jane Austen are recognizably similar. Of course other novelists dropped the conventions of humor and happy endings, attempting to inject the heroic seriousness of the epic and tragedy genres into realistic narratives of non-elite protagonists.

Is that about right?

Sredni Vashtar

Well, there's also a distinction to be made between novels and romances, and romances and epics; an important point to be made about the evolution of the novel form in Japan and China long before it made its way to Europe; and a whole interesting argument to be made about what differentiates, say, a serial novel from a series of novels. But these may or may not be out of my depth.

Mr. Darcy

I'd be out of my depth with the evolution of the novel in Japan and China, for sure. The Tale of Genji from the 1010s is obviously a novel, but the only Chinese fiction I'm familiar with are the classic Ming romances. I have no idea if realistic prose fiction in China was influenced by its early development in Japan.