The Novel

THE NOVEL

Image Credit publicdomainpictures

The best known literary genre today, the novel was born in the Middle Ages. In the XII ^thcentury, the novel is written in verse ... - like the majority of literary works. Roman then means writing in the Romance language (in the vernacular, in French), as opposed to Latin, which is the language of scholars of the west. It was only in XIV ^th century that the prose novel.The expression "put into a novel" is used, around 1150, to designate adapted narratives of the Latin texts, a practice then common.This translation (ortranslatio ) is in general an adaptation more or less remote from the "original" work.The vulgar language is first used to tell the life of the saints, but soon the fiction takes hold of it. The new literary genre thus created, "the novel," then takes the name of the language it uses.The common meaning of the word "romance" remains for a long time that of "narrative composed in French", even though Chrétien de Troyes replaces the expression "make a novel" Creative activity.While the song of gesture is still popular, the new generation, that of Chrétien, will make the fortune of the novel, which will eventually triumph over the epic. It seems that this new genre responds to the demand of a society that is experiencing profound socio-cultural changes.