Novel

According to Oxford English dictionary a novel is 'a fictious prose

narrative or tale of considerable length enough to fill one or more
volumes in which characters and actions are representative of real life of
past or present times are portrayed in a plot in more or less complexity.
We can analyse this definition by pointing out some important point in
this acute and precise definition.

The novel is fictious-fiction, in the novel we may find imaginary

characters or situations, but still it has a quality of reality because novel is
our sense to reality. Real people and characters can be found in the novel,
but we can not just only include these things and remain novel, because
imaginary characters and situations are representative of real life:
imaginary characters of novel do which are probable to happen real life.
Although they are imaginary characters but they have a sense of reality
not physically real, and this feature of the novel makes it to be different
from romance and epic. The case of real life makes novel totally different
from other genres of literature because novel is a real reflection of real
life.

The language of novel is in prose and not in verse. It is true that the
novelist may include the poetic element into his or her novel, but yet its
language is prose and not verse on one hand, and it will completely
wrong if we consider that the language of novel is equivalent to non-
literary (ordinary) speech on the other hand. Prose helps the novelist to
establish real life in his or her novel by using different techniques such
as: narrative technique, images, symbols, speech and dialogues.

The novel is narrated to the reader and this distinguishes novel

from drama which is enacted. Reading novel is different from watching
movie or watching and reading drama since while we read a novel, we
observe the events relying on the narrators point of view: usually in
reading novel we depend on what is reported by narrator rather than what
is perceived by our self which means we see the events of the novel as the
narrator sees.

The novel deals with past, present and future at the top of all the
novelists function is to describe the thing that might happen or what is
possible as being probable and necessary to happen and this distinguishes
novel from history that only deals with what just has happened. We can
put the prose language of history into the prose language of novel, but
still it has a species of history since it is a matter of universality and
locality: novel is universal because it deals with the daily live of human
in general with much more personal point of view, but history is local
because it deals with overall achievements, events and happenings of an
entire nation focusing on what has written. Novel has social and moral
messages, for novel's real concern is with people and it deals with the
family, daily life and plan for future, but history deals with a particular
country, government and nation working on their past events. So we can
sum up that history is lifeless and it deals with fact: it is an old adage
which has a grain of truth, but novel is full of life and it deals with the
value of human and its importance in detail and it has a grain of
subjectivity.

Characters, events, and plot can be found in novel: events happen

to character in the plot and this forms a sort of unity between these three
elements in novel, and this helps novelist to make his or her novel remain
coherence by using some sort of techniques such as: chronological order,
cause and effect, human activity and by making parallel line between the
characters and events. So these three elements character, event and plot
are closely related to each other and make novel remain coherence.

The novel has a certain length. It is really difficult to decide on the

length of the novel, but we can say that novel usually contains 200 to 600
pages. It doesn’t matter whether novel contains 200 pages or 600, but the
matter is with filling the subject that novel evolves around. So the length
of novel is parallel with subject that novel deals with.

In conclusion we can say that novel is a fiction with reference to

logic and reality, and it is written inform of prose. In the novel characters
do actions in the plot, and the narrator reports and shows what happened
or what happens or even what might happen in the future using enough
detail to portray the events and lengthen the novel.