The Rise of the novel. Letteratura

[Ivana.22]

The literature of the 18th century reflected the economic and intellectual progress of the period and an increasing popular interest in reading. Lending, or circulating, libraries acquired great importance and since subscriptions were moderately priced, they led to an increase in the reading public. More printed items were produced, literacy increased (60% of the adult male and 40% of the adult female population could read) and more and more readers belonged to the middle and lower classes. People preferred prose to verse and drama. They liked reading about the practical needs of different trades, stories of pirates and thieves, books dealing with journeys to distant countries, accounts of crime, political pamphlets and newspapers. Writing became a profession ruled by economic criteria, and the value of an author depended on the number of pages he or she wrote. The belief in the power of reason and the individual’s trust in his own abilities found expression in the novel. By definition, a novel is ‘a long prose narrative about largely fictional, if usually realistic,characters and plausible events’. The 18th-century novelist was the spokesman of the middle class. The realism of the novel was not linked to the kind of life presented,but to the way it was shown. The writer’s primary aim was to write in a simple way in order to be understood even by less well-educated readers. The novel, which was primarily concerned with everything that could alter social status, was particularly appealing to the practical-minded tradesman, who was self-made and self-reliant. The sense of reward and punishment, which was the ‘message’ of the novel itself, was related to the Puritan ethics of the middle classes. Qualcuno potrebbe estrarmi delle domande che si riferiscono al testo? (sempre in inglese)