The English Novel - An Introduction - Preface to What Is a Novel?

Sep 21, 2026

An introduction to the English novel that explains what a novel is, why it is difficult to define, and how the genre continually undermines fixed categories. The text discusses novels as prose fiction while noting exceptions such as verse novels, and it examines ambiguous boundaries between fiction and fact as well as the problem of “reasonable length.” It frames the novel as an anti-genre and a versatile “melting pot” that can combine many modes—poetry, dialogue, history, satire, tragedy—and explores its social and ideological associations.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryStory & Novel

FormatPDF

Pages282

Reading Time7 h 14 min

AccessFree to download

Preface

What Is a Novel?

Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift

Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson

Laurence Sterne

Walter Scott and Jane Austen

CONTENTS PREFACE 1 WHAT IS A NOVEL? 2 DANIEL DEFOE AND JONATHAN SWIFT 3 HENRY FIELDING AND SAMUEL RICHARDSON 4 LAURENCE STERNE 5 WALTER SCOTT AND JANE AUSTEN 6 THE BRONTËS 7 CHARLES DICKENS 8 GEORGE ELIOT 9 THOMAS HARDY 10 HENRY JAMES 11 JOSEPH CONRAD 12 D. H. LAWRENCE 13 JAMES JOYCE 14 VIRGINIA WOOLF POSTCRIPT: AFTER THE WAKE NOTES INDEX By the same author Sweet Violence: The Idea ofthe Tragic The Idea ofCulture Scholars and Rebels: In Nineteenth-Century Ireland The Illusions ofPostmodernism Literary Theory: An Introduction Second edition Marxist Literary Theory: AReader Co-edited with Drew Milne The Ideology ofthe Aesthetic William Shakespeare © 2005 by Terry Eagleton BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Terry Eagleton to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 10 2012 Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Eagleton, Terry, 1943– The English novel : an introduction / Terry Eagleton. [p. cm](p. cm). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1–4051–1706–0 (alk. paper)– ISBN 978-1–4051–1707–4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English fiction–History and criticism. I. Title. PR821 .E15 2005 823.009–dc22 2003026893 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, [visit our website:](visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com)[ ](visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com)[www.blackwellpublishing.com](visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com) For Franco Moretti PREFACE This book is intended as an introduction to the English novel for students, but also for any general readers who might find the subject interesting. Though it occasionally considers particular novels in some detail, it is designed largely to offer ideas about a writer ’s work as a whole, which a reader may then bring to bear on individual texts. I have tried to tread a precarious line between bamboozling readers and talking down to them; and though some parts of it may be more intelligible to a beginner than others, I hope that what difficulties there may be belong, so to speak, to the subject matter rather than to the presentation. I must apologize for confining myself so high-mindedly to the literary canon, but this was determined by the need to discuss authors whom students are at present most likely to encounter in their work. It should not, needless to say, be taken to imply that only those English novelists presented between these covers are worth reading. T.E. 1 WHAT IS A NOVEL? A novel is a piece of prose fiction of a reasonable length. Even a definition as toothless as this, however, is still too restricted. Not all novels are writtten in prose. There are novels in verse, like Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin or Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. As for fiction, the distinction between fiction and fact is not always clear. And what counts as a reasonable length? At what point does a novella or long short story become a novel? André Gide ’s The Immoralist is usually described as a novel, and Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Duel ’ as a short story, but they are both about the same length. The truth is that the novel is a genre which resists exact definition. This in itself is not particularly striking, since many things – ‘game ’, for example, or ‘hairy’ – resist exact definition. It is hard to say how ape-l

FAQs

How does the book define a novel at the start?

It begins with the idea of a novel as prose fiction of a reasonable length, while immediately showing that this definition is too narrow and cannot settle key questions.

Why is the novel difficult to define precisely?

Because the genre resists exact boundaries: it can appear in verse, fiction/fact distinctions are not always clear, and even length categories like novella versus novel are unstable.

What does the text mean by calling the novel an “anti-genre”?

It suggests the novel undermines conventional genres by mixing and absorbing other literary modes—such as epic, pastoral, satire, tragedy, and dialogue—into a flexible, transformative form.

Sep 21, 2026

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