Mad About Science: Novels

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

Libraries possess one thing in spades: novels. What exactly constitutes a novel?

A novel is a narrative work of fiction that focuses on characters moving a plot over the course of at least 40,000 words. That’s an extreme simplification and I’m sure a number of my coworkers would give you a variety of definitions of what a novel actually is.

If you’re looking for an example, I bet you can guess where you should go.

Despite their cultural impact, novels are a relatively new art form. Writing itself may be tens of thousands of years old, but long and complicated stories that are written down have been an anomaly until recently.

There could be a few reasons for this. The time required to sit down and create a novel is not trivial. Imagine trying to create a world and populate it with characters while also having to worry about spending your entire daylight hours farming, or not getting poisoned by your fellow courtiers. 

Churning out a novel also means you need a medium upon which to write. Pulp paper in vast quantities is a relatively new invention, and it’s not designed to last for very long without specialized help. Even parchment, which was largely used during most of western history, deteriorates when it’s not being kept in ideal conditions. If you’re thinking about a stone tablet, you’ll need a pretty darn big rock and some Dwayne Johnson-sized arms to chisel out an epic on that medium.

Courtesy photo.

In all likelihood, novels have likely been written in some form for a very long time, but it’s unlikely that many of them survived the vicissitudes of history.

The earliest novel that we’re aware of is The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu around 1021 CE. This novel was bound like an accordion, with sheets of paper fixed together on opposing edges and intended to fold into a compact whole. In Japan, this style of book is called orihon, though it actually originated from China around 618 CE.

The Tale of Genji is a curious thing. It’s not a novel in the way that you might recognize, though it still checks all of the boxes to meet that classification. It’s largely about courtly life surrounding a man named Genji in Heian-era Japan and showcases a cast of more than 400 characters. Curiously, most of these characters are never named and only referred to by their titles. The characters’ titles change over the course of the story due to them aging, dying or their heirs replacing them, compounding the confusion. There’s no overarching plot like you would find in modern novels — no tidy three-act resolution — but instead chronicles the life and time of the fictitious characters living at that period, as well as some characters that might not be fictitious, including a character that may even be the author herself.

This story is also extremely difficult to read. Not only is it written in an archaic form of Japanese, but it’s written as a poem as well. Most modern Japanese readers wouldn’t be able to decipher or understand it without some scholarly help. This is a lot like if we tried to read Beowulf, which was written around 700 CE.

The following is an excerpt from Beowulf if you’d like to give it a whirl. Try reading it aloud in a public place like your favorite coffee shop: Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. (“So. The Spear-Danes in the days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.”)

Novels as we might recognize them first started to appear in earnest in the early 1700s. The printing press revolutionized the written word, allowing for efficient replication of books. A rapid development in technology also played a role in the popularity of novels, as greater technology allowed for more leisure time for some. Of course, this time period is impossible to talk about accurately without mentioning the great tragedy of slavery. Slave masters had leisure time, because they were forcing other people to labor on their behalf and make their money, which left plenty of time for them to read works of entertaining fiction. Much of the wealth that swelled the ranks of middle- and upper-class whites in the 1700s and into the 1800s was reaped from slavery — far more than any technological advancements at the time.

The history of novels and slavery are closely intertwined. Did you know that a major catalyst of the American Civil War was actually a novel? Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, chronicled the lives of fictitious characters suffering the horrors of slavery in 1800s America. Stowe, a staunch abolitionist, interviewed numerous freedmen and former slaves while penning the novel, citing their horrific experiences at the hands of those with the most to profit from their enslavement to be mirrored in her characters.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin proved to be one of the most divisive pieces of literature in American history.

If you’re looking for your new favorite novel, come visit the Library. November is National Novel Writing Month, and we’re showcasing a number of novels written for “NaNoWriMo” on display upstairs. If you’re interested in an extra challenge, see if you can write a novel of your own in the remaining days of November — 50,000 words by Dec. 1? You’ve got this.

Stay curious, 7B.