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THE RISE OF THE NOVEL - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The book is divided into 4 parts.
        1) Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, is shipwrecked on Lilliput, an island whose inhabitants are only 6 inches tall. Gulliver learns the customs of the Lilliputians and becomes involved in their war against the enemy island Belfuscu.
        2) Gulliver is abandoned by his shipmates on the island of Brobdingnag, inhabited by giants. Initially he becomes a pet for children and later he is sold to the queen who makes him a courtly diversion. However his life is not easy because he is disgusted by the physicality of the Brobdingnagians and startled by their ignorance.
        3) Gulliver visits several islands, the most important is Laputa, a floating island inhabited by philosophers and scientists who seem completely out of touch with reality
        4) Gulliver arrives in an unknown land populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses whomrule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who serve the Houynhnms. As he learns everything about the horses culture - based on respect, truth and reason - Gulliver starts to despise his own race. After 4 years he is banished because his body reveals similarity to Yahoos. Once in England he finds all humans despicable, but he gradually tries to re-accustom himself to this life. He buys 2 horses to keep as companions and speak with
    - - It is at the same time a parody of a travel book, a tale for children and an allegorical story. It has been read as a negative utopia or even as an anticipation of the modern fantasy fiction literary trend.
        It is actually a social satire on human nature and on the political situation in England. Gulliver is a middle-aged and well educated man who is confronted with different realities and perspectives which progressively lead him to question the limits of the European values and to represent and attack men's disgusting physicality, viciousness, hypocrisy, cruelty and absurd pretensions.
        The book revolves around concepts of rationality, animality, morality and alienation. In the first book Gulliver is seen by the rational and warmongering Lilliputians as an animal-like body. By contrast on Brobdningnag Gulliver is the rational-thinking person while the giants are physically repulsive. In the third book Swift criticises impractical rationality and theoretical knowledge in order tomrepresent the limits of 18th century science which had lost the harmony between intellect and common sense. In the last voyage Gulliver finds an ideal community where life is governed by sense and moderation. The Huoyhnhnms, however, banish him so he remains a maladjusted. The book isnabout modern alienation as Gulliver repeatedly fails to integrate himself into different societies.
- - - - Plot and structure
        
        Inspired by the real story of Alexander Selkirk, a seaman who was shipwrecked on a desert island of the Pacific Ocean in 1704 where he remained alone for 5 years.
        Divided into 3 sections:
        1) Crusoe's early life, decision to go to sea against his father's wish and his first adventures until he becomes a plantation owner in Brazil. Later he decides to go on a voyage to Africa to procure slaves. On his journey he is shipwrecked on a desert island as the only survivor.
        2) main body of the story, about Cruoe's 28 years on the islands: how he tries to overcome difficulties, progressively becoming the master of the island. After 12 years he encounters a savage, whom he calls Friday after the day of his rescue from cannibals. He teaches him English and the Bible so he converts him to Christianity
        3) Crusoe's rescue and return to England with Friday as his servant and the discovery that his plantation in Brazil has made him very rich
      - Features and interpretation
        
        it depicts the new hero of the middle class, embodying its values: hard work, self improvement, belief in practical morality and God's providence.
        The novel has been interpreted as:
        
        a religious allegory of man's redemption from sin through hard work and self and God's reliance
        
        an economic allegory of the mercantilistic hero who reproduces a society similar to the one he comes from by his strength, intelligence and Puritan's conviction that God is on his side. Cruse considers the island his property.
        
        an imperialist allegory of the British coloniser who is convinced of his superiority over the savage Friday and of his civilising mission. Crusoe's logic follows that of the British government who defended their right to dominate parts of Afrixa and India, while Friday is the archetype of the colonised who is not given a voice until Crusoe teaches him English
    - - The fortunes and misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders
        
        A poor but pretty and clever girl who is seduced by a rich man, goes through 5 marriages, has children, is forced to become a prostitute and a thief to make a way for herself in a difficult world. In the end she comes back to England from Virginia, where she was deported and imprisoned for theft and prostitution and ends up leading a respectable life, repenting for her sins.
        Typical Defoe's heroine, independent woman whose adventures reveal a series of social problems affecting g Britain at the time: crime, unwanted children, social status of women who could be considered respectable only if they got married
- - - - Features:
        
        realism he based his narratives on real or verosimilar events set in domestic, closed environments
        
        use of epistolary forms which strengthens the idea of 'authenticity of his novels, provides different viewpoints and guarantees dramatic quality and immediacy to the story
        
        great characterization inner life of his characters, feelings and desires
        
        sentimentalism his narratives are all love stories, happy or tragic which introduce sentimental and good-natured heroines and rely on the emotional response from the readers
  - - - The story of a 15-year-old girl who is sent to work as a waiting-maid to the rich Lady B. When the woman dies, her son Mr B, who is attracted to her, tries to seduce the girl but she firmly rejects his advances. Later Pamela writes a letter to her parents to tell them, she wants to come back home. The letter is intercepted by Mr B who makes them believe that Pamela had an affair with a poor clergyman and that he is sending her to a safer place to preserve her honour. Unfortunately, he imprisoned Pamela in his country house where the housekeeper forbids her to write letters so she starts keeping a journal. On reading all the letters, Mr B realises what suffering he has caused to Pamela and understands that he loves her. When he asks her to marry him she refuses and leaves, although she later realises that shemisses him and accepts his proposal, becoming his wife
    - - The most important theme is virtue, whose preservation is eventually rewarded. Pamela is the honest woman who embodies the values of moral rectitude and Christian chastity and acquires social status only through marriage. Her values contrast with those of her master who tries to seduce her. Virtue is strictly related to the theme of love. It can be read as a modern Cinderella story in which 2 people belonging to different social classes eventually fall in love with each other and marry. Pamela documents the rupture of the rigid class barrier which began in the 18th century
  - - - Tragic story of Clarissa, a 18-year-old middle-class innocent girl who falls in love with the villain Richard Lovelace, who should pay court to her sister Arabella. Although her family commands her to marry a rich but horrible man, she refusesand continues her secret correspondance with Lovelace, who eventually convinces her to run away with him. He has no intention to marry Clarissa and forces her into cohabitation. He takes her at Mrs Sinclair's house, a brothel where Lovelace's former women, whom he ruined in the past, instigate him to rape her. At first he hesitates but eventually Mrs Sinclair drugs Clarissa and he takes advantage of her. Although Lovelace regrets his action, Clarissa who ha lost her virtue, runs away, stops eating and let herself die. With the help of Bedford, Lovelace's friend, she puts her affairs in order and even orders a coffin. Following her death, the members of her family who refused to forgive her are all punished. Her parents die soon after, her sister and brother marry badly and are unhappy for the rest of their lives. Lovelace, tormented by what he has done but still unable to change, also dies in a duel with Clarissa's cousin
    - - Theme of immoral rogue against the innocent heroine or the rewards of virtue against the punishment of evil. Although Clarissa's virtue persecuted and defeated, in the end her death is a reward because she is allowed to go to heaven. The novel has been read as Richardson's critique of bourgeois materialism and family tiranny. The girl is the victim of her own family who want to force her to marry a rich man tto heighten their social rank. It is above all the story of a woman's strenuous but failed attempt to reach a sense of autonomy and maintain her virtue among the wicked pressure of society
- - - - An apology for the life of Miss Shamela Andrews 1741 parody of Pamela by Richardson in which he attacked sentimentalism and hypocritical morality
        
        The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews 1742 follows the picaresque tradition established by Don Quixotic. It tells the story of Pamela's supposed brother who is proved by many women that want to seduce him. After many adventures he marries a virtuous woman. The preface is considered Fielding's manifesto in which he explained why his works were comic prose epics
        
        The life of Johnatan Wild, the Great 1743 career of a criminal hanged in 1725. Unlike Defoe, Fielding describes the hero in a mock-heroic way
        
        Amelia 1751 story of the marriage of Amelia and Mr Booth army officer. Despite the man's many transgressions, she remains faithful to him while he is in prison. Thankst an unexpected fortune she manages tompay off his debts, accrued by gambling and the man converts to a moral life. Unlikete previous novels this is not satirical and talks about social problems
      - THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING
        
        structure and plot
        
        3 parts:
        1) Mr Allworthy, a rich and good-hearted man, discovers an abandoned baby in his bed. Tom, who is brought up and educated like Bilfil, the son of his sister Bridget. The 2 boys are very different: Tom is a generous boy, though prone to amorous adventures, while Bilfil is pious but malicious. Although Tom falls in love with Sophia, the daughter of Allworthy's neighbour, he knows that the marriage is impossible as he is socially inferior. Sophia's mother, on her part, encourages her to marry Bilfil, although the girl is in love with Tom. Bilfil's machinations against Tom also lead him to be banished from Mr Allworthy's House.
        
        2) Tom is forced to wander about the countryside, where he meets new characters and has another love affair at a local Inn. When he comes to know that Sophia, who has run away in order not to marry Bilfil, has been to the Inn, he sets out in pursuit of her.
        
        3) Tom and Sophia are eventually reconciled, Bilfil's machinations against him are unmasked and Tom's real origins are revealed. He is actually Bridget's son and he is recognised as Mr Allworthy's heir so nobody opposes his marriage to Sophia.
        
        themes and interpretation
        
        In the novel Fielding uses both the devices of picaresque tradition, as he involved the main characters in a series of adventures, and of romance, as he narrated a love story. However it was considered by Fielding himself a comic-epic novel because:
        
        the novel is about the frivolous actions of an unserviceable man who travels tomor around London
        
        unlike epic heroes, Tom movesrom adversity to prosperity not vice versa
        
        the novel's tone is not formal and solemn but lively and comic
        
        no high moral lesson is taught. The purpose is however moral because Fielding through irony criticises the evils of English societynsuchnas hypocrisy or vanity butnalso praises positive values such as honour, good-heartedness and Christian charity.
- - - - it tells about the protagonist's conception, birth, christening and accidental circumcision, the problem of his nose and education, his tours of France. This main narrative line intermingles with small events and eccentric characters from before and after his birth, who determined the course of his life in one way or another: his father Walter, his mother, the Parson and his Uncle Toby. The novel also focuses on Uncle Toby's story, an ex-army officer obsessed with re-enacting battles and on his sentimentaldisappointments
    - - defined as the anti-novel or meta-novel because:
        
        it has no real plot and the events are not narrated in a chronological order. The narrative advances through thenprotagonist's memories, digressions and associations of ideas in which past, present and future coexist.
        
        use of First person narrator to bes convey the characters' feelings and thoughts. Influenced by John Locke's theory on the association of ideas, which explained how we can link very different thoughts and ideas that apparently have nothing in common. Forerunner of the stream of consciousness technique
        
        reflection on the creative process of writing and its mechanisms. No distinction between descriptive passages, dialogues and author's and characters' reflections, preface written in the 3rd book. Sternes uses many topographical signs and wonders to remind of the materiality of the book, show the readers the artificial nature of the novel and make evident the illusion of realism that the novel aimed to present.
        
        but also elements such as:
        
        picaresque form with episodic structure
        
        use of conventional biographical structure
        
        mock-heroic presentation of certain subjects