Slides to accompany lecture on the historical development of fiction for an introductory, undergraduate course in fiction

1. G-EN270 INTRO TO FICTION
The Historical
Development of Fiction
Bruce Clary, McPherson College, McPherson, Kansas

2. G-EN270 INTRO TO ICTION
AR340 WEB-BASEDFDESIGN
Three major genres
• Novel – long, unified prose narrative
• Novella – unified prose narrative of
15,000-50,000 words
• Short story – compact, tightly unified prose
narrative

3. G-EN270 INTRO TO ICTION
AR340 WEB-BASEDFDESIGN
Western biases against fiction
• Verse the privileged genre
• Imaginative literature dangerous
• Through the 18th Century, literature expected to
be edifying
• Prose literature especially because it was
“common” language, associated with coarseness

4. G-EN270 INTRO TO FICTION
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”

5. G-EN270 INTRO TO ICTION
AR340 WEB-BASEDFDESIGN
Precursors of prose fiction
• Myths • Parables
• Epics • Romances
• Fables • Tales

6. G-EN270 INTRO TO FICTION
Landmarks of the 18th-Century Novel in English
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
1722
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
1726
Samuel Richardson, Pamela
1740
Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
1742
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
1747
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
1749
Laurence Stern, Tristram Shandy Ann Radcliff, The Mysteries of Udolpho
1759 1794
Daniel Defoe, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
1719 1771 1812
1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835
Lengthy fictional narratives written in prose had appeared sporadically before 1700; examples include the stories in Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1351-1353), the
English romancer Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (c. 1469), and Don Quixote (1605, 1615), by Miguel de Cervantes of Spain. These early precursors aside, most scholars date the
birth of the modern novel to the eighteenth century.

7. G-EN270 INTRO TO FICTION
Landmarks of the 19th-Century Novel in English
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
1850
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
1851
Harriett Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
1852
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
1818 1861
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe George Eliot, Middlemarch
1819 1872
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans Henry James, Daisy Miller
1826 1879
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
1839 1884
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights Kate Chopin, The Awakening
1847 1899
1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915

8. G-EN270 INTRO TO FICTION
Historical Development of Modern Short Fiction
James Joyce, Dubliners
1914
Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse Constance Garnett, English Translation of Anton Chekhov's Stories
1846 1916
Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
1853
1919
THE REALISTIC SHORT STORY
1853 - 1920 Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
1925
THE PROSE TALE REGIONAL, or "LOCAL COLOR" STORIES
1819 - 1852 1870 - 1900 William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily"
1931
Washington Irving, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon Gustave Flaubert, Three Tales DIVERSE CONTEMPORARY FICTION
1820 1877
1946 - 2005
Edgar Allan Poe, "A MS. Found in a Bottle" Guy de Maupassant, "Ball of Fat" Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
1833 1880 1952
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales Kate Chopin, Bayou Folk Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Leaf Storm
1837 1894 1955
NATURALISM MINIMALISM
Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
1840 1894 - 1930 1975 - 1990
MODERNISM
Poe, Tales Raymond Carver, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
1845 1912 - 1945 1976
1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030