Paper Summary:

This paper studies how the novel went from an early state of what is now referred to as pre-novel, such as the work of Daniel Defoe, all the way to post modern work, such as "The Sot-Weed Factor" by John Barth. The novel changed, evolved, grew and reflected the society reading it from its birth. This paper looks in depth at the causes for its rise, its moment of perfection and its change into alternative form such as modernism and post-modernism.

Table of Contents:
"Robinson Crusoe" and the Beginning of the Novel
The Capitalism and Secular Values of "Robinson Crusoe"
Changing Times as Seen in "Moll Flanders"
Form and Function of the Novel in "Moll Flanders"
The Reader's Identification with Moll
The Characterization of "Moll Flanders"
Criticism of Defoe as a Novelist
"Tom Jones" and the Progression of the Novel
The Prefaces of "Tom Jones"
"Emma" and the Height of the Novel
The World Surrounding "Emma"
Female Authority and Readership in "Emma"
Character in "Emma"
"The Sound and the Fury": the Modern Novel
Character in "The Sound and the Fury"
Form of the Novel Altered in "The Sound and the Fury"
"The Sot-Weed Factor" and the Introduction of Postmodernism
Character in "The Sot-Weed Factor"
Conclusion: The Novel's Trajectory

From the Paper:

"The novel as we know it today began perhaps three centuries ago, when works began to surface that were not easily categorized into previously known literary forms. There had been true life accounts, political treatises and poetry, but nothing quite like a fictional story told from either first or third person, which defied the unities of time and place and was something to be read in more than one or even two sittings. In fact, in the early pre-novel period, works such as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders were actually presented as true life accounts to the readers, perhaps as a means to ease them into this new and undefined form of literature. As the novel grew in popularity, authors such as Henry Fielding were beginning to not only structure the novel into chapters and books, but were also defining the form of the narrative and dictating its conventions right in the context of his novel, as we will see later in this paper. By the time Jane Austen was writing, novels had reached a place of comfort and understanding in the eyes of the readers, if not always in the eyes of scholars. She helped introduce this growing and flourishing genre to women, as well as helped refine the form of the novel. Later authors such as William Faulkner took what was known as the novel and changed it forever, adding multiple viewpoints and jumps in time and space that defied not only the unities but conventional timelines as well. Then, in what we now call the postmodern era, authors like John Barth wrote texts that took a look at the constructs that novels previously worked with and exploded them. The intent of this paper is to look at the rise of the novel: its growth into the form we commonly refer to today as "the novel", its stabilization, and its change into alternative forms of novel such as modernism and postmodernism. I will look closely at each of the above authors, showing how each contributed to this now widely read form of literature."

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