WHAT IS THE MODERN NOVEL?

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, written in the early 11th century, marked the beginning of the modern novel phenomenon.  Of course, this is up for debate.  The definition of the modern novel floats somewhere between obscure and obsolete.  The novel expresses art.  It reflects but also defines society, time, consciousnesses both of the individual and collective nature, and somehow both connects and divides their audiences. The modern novel can personify a swath of ideas, rearranging the history and future of humanity by capturing the present, but only by representing the present, past, or future from the past tense. 

The difficultly in defining an entity like the novel is that it isn’t just one thing, it’s many things coagulated under an umbrella with holes in it.  Because the modern novel is not just an influencer of society, but also a mirror to it, the novel itself has progressed through time.  This makes the task even more complicated.  During our curation process, we had to keep in mind that not all novels can be, or even should be included under our umbrella.  We did our best to select ones we felt best fulfilled our observations, and that can show how the modern novel has evolved.

In its beginning, and for hundreds of years that followed, the novel possessed several similar tropes.  While the ideas of love vs hate, good vs evil, or the overcoming of odds have traversed the ages, the characters that experience these themes have changed dramatically.  Partially reflective of their readership, early novels often told the stories of people of importance.  The upper class filled the pages and thus the imaginations of who read them.

As literacy rates increased, and the lower class became the majority of readers, the characters within novels reflected this shift.  Everyday people became the focus of stories and a more diverse multitude of voices began to show on the pages.           

From tales of royalty, faithful religious figures, great journeyers who have traveled far and wide, and knights in shining armor to a greedy old man who learns humility and a young adult that flunked out of college who is concerned with the notion of kids growing up. The novel has truly allowed any kind of audience to glimpse at a rainbow. One that shines with all of the shades of humanity’s social classes.

While we sadly could not sleuth our way through every nook and cranny of the modern novel, we believe that we at least covered a single room in this giant mansion of a topic.

Thank you for reading, and have a lovely day.