Concetti Chiave
- The 18th-century novel focused on realism, depicting everyday situations and lives of middle-class tradesmen in accessible language.
- The lack of royal patronage for poetry led writers to target middle and lower-class readers, fostering the growth of prose.
- The aim was to write simply to be understood by wider audiences, emphasizing speed and volume as key economic virtues.
- Novels carried strong moral messages, aligning with Puritan ethics, rewarding virtue and punishing sin.
- Novels featured detailed settings with specific references, enhancing realism and reader connection to the story.
Rise of the novel
The novel of the 18th century was based on realism, with ordinary situations, ordinary experiences in which the reader could identify in. The language was simple and understandable without latinism or anything not related to everyday english. Plots represented typical and familiar lives of middle-class tradesmen and they wanted to show that men are able to build up their living and improve their conditions relying only on his skills and ability.
Reasons
The German King didn’t partonised poetry, that was related to the upper class, so the court was not interested in english literature.
Writers found new readers in the middle and lower class, ready to support the improvement of prose production.
Bourgeois public wanted to improve its cultural condition because now they had money to do that.
They thought reason, which could analyse world and people, could be better represented by prose.
Middle-class had the opportunity to improve its conditions thanks to circulating libraries, Sunday schools, coffee houses and the diffusion of dictionaries, that helped to create a standard english that everybody could understand.
Aim
Its aim was to write in a simple way in order to be understood by middle and even lower classes, so speed and copiousness became the most important economic virtues.
Message
The moralising message was strong in novelists’ stories: the sense of reward and punishment was related to the Puritan ethics of the middle classes, for which a reward was given for virtue and punishment for sins.
Characters
The subject of the novels was always a middle-class and Puritan man, who was self-made and self-reliant because he had to represent the typical men of the period, in order to create a more realistic story for readers that wanted to identify theirself in it.
Narrator
The writer was omnipresent, and he always used the third-person or the first-person.
Setting
Great attention was given to the setting: the descriptions had a lot of details and specific references to names of streets or towns gave more realism to the narration.
Domande da interrogazione
- Qual era l'obiettivo principale del romanzo del XVIII secolo?
- Quali erano i motivi per cui il romanzo divenne popolare tra le classi medie e basse?
- Come venivano rappresentati i personaggi nei romanzi del XVIII secolo?
L'obiettivo principale era scrivere in modo semplice per essere compreso dalle classi medie e basse, enfatizzando velocità e abbondanza come virtù economiche importanti.
Il romanzo divenne popolare perché il re tedesco non patrocinava la poesia, e le classi medie e basse cercavano di migliorare la loro condizione culturale, supportate da biblioteche circolanti, scuole domenicali e case del caffè.
I personaggi erano tipicamente uomini della classe media e puritani, auto-sufficienti e auto-realizzati, per rappresentare l'uomo tipico del periodo e creare storie realistiche con cui i lettori potessero identificarsi.
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