The Rise Of The Novel

Eighteenth-century English readers recognized the "novel" as a new literary form that borrowed from previous narrative traditions such as the spiritual autobiography, romance, the picaresque tale, criminal biography, and travel literature. As a genre the "novel" raises questions of authority, tradition, convention, and innovation: What distinguishes creation from bastardization? What types of "mixing" are acceptable and which are not? How is something recognized as genuinely new and how is it incorporated into an existing tradition? The issue of identity is central to the "novel" as a literary form and is reflected in its subject matter. The genre enabled authors and readers to explore the subjectivity of the individual self, the constitution of identity within a specific environment, and the relationship between "self" and "other." From the new worlds made available by technological innovations such as the microscope and telescope to Robinson Crusoe's disorientation at seeing a mysterious footprint in the sand, encountering the strange, the foreign, and the shocking broadened the perspectives and possibilities of literature in novel ways.