Historical Forms of Prose

Question 1

This fiction is set in particular historical periods, including prehistoric and mythological. Examples include Walter Scott’s Rob Roy and Ivanhoe; Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace; Robert Graves’ I, Claudius; Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea (an historical novel using Greek mythology); Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Between the Acts; and John Dos Passos’s U.S.A trilogy.

Answer 1

Historical Fiction

Question 2

These kind of novels originated as a reaction against 18th-century Enlightenment rationalism, featuring horror, mystery, superstition, madness, supernatural elements, and revenge. Early examples include Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Matthew Gregory Lewis’ Monk, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Answer 2

Gothic Novels

Question 3

originating in 17th-century France, explore characters’ motivations. Examples include Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut; George Eliot’s novels; Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; and the novels of Henry James, James Joyce, and Vladimir Nabokov.

Answer 3

Psychological Novels

Question 4

fictional stories that observe, explore, and analyze the social behaviors of a specific time and place. While deep psychological themes are more universal across different historical periods and countries, the manners of a particular society are shorter-lived and more varied; this form captures these societal details

Answer 4

Novel of Manners

Question 5

These novels originated in the movement of Romanticism. Eighteenth-century examples of novels that emphasize the emotional aspect of love include Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse (1761).

Answer 5

Sentimental Novels

Question 6

These novels are told in the form of letters written by their characters rather than in typical narrative form. Samuel Richardson, the best-known author of these novels like Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748),

Answer 6

Epistolary Novels

Question 7

These novels lyrically idealize country life as idyllic and utopian, akin to the Garden of Eden.

Answer 7

Pastoral Novels

Question 8

German for “education novel.” This term is also used in English to describe “apprenticeship” novels focusing on coming-of-age stories, including youth’s struggles and searches for things such as identity, spiritual understanding, or the meaning in life.

Answer 8

Bildungsroman

Question 9

French for “novel with a key,” refers to books that require a real-life frame of reference, or key, for full comprehension. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale contains details that confuse readers unaware of history about the Earl of Bolingbroke’s involvement in an assassination plot

Answer 9

Roman à clef