Talk:Novel

message: A question: The present bibliography is problematic: It does not contain all the articles and books mentioned in the footnotes (and that is good, as they have been quite specific at times to make the exact points). It is secondly not very structured and hence of little help. I would actually like to create a bibliography that somehow follows the chapters of the present article - a bibliography designed to help students dealing with the history of fiction both with general and specific works. Is there an opinion about whether Wikipedia could have a separate page of research dealing with something like the novel - a page that could become relatively large in order to assist those who actually do research on the novel? --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separate Bibliography? 

message: Hi Aristophanes68. I read the chapter you added - and am not quite sure whether it will lead to anything. Part of what you said has been said in the article's first chapter Antecedents around the world, the other half is the topic of the 20th century chapter I explicitly connected with the issue of globalisation The novel and the global market of texts: 20th- and 21st-century developments. I feel it would make more sense to add additional knowledge under these headings - so far the new chapter does not go far beyond repeating things. --Olaf Simons (talk) 11:36, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I wonder if some of that information is buried in the earlier sections. Would it be useful to bring that information down to create a fuller section on how the novel is adapted outside Europe? Just a thought. It seems like an important enough issue that it should be given its own space--especially with the concerns stated earlier that the article is too European as it is.... Aristophanes68 (talk) 03:34, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends on your perspective - if you are interested in national literatures and in literature as a mirror of continents and cultures you will prefer a structure of regions. If you see it as a historical construction (which is the more recent) you will connect the globalisation with the 20th century (which I did). The bad structure is the so and so structure with repetitions and additions. --Olaf Simons (talk) 18:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Novel#The novel outside the West]]

message: Why does Novelist redirect here?
:Not the slightest idea. What would one do with an article on the subject. --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Novelist]]

message: Klkopish added a number of sections, which might receive some more considerations before they get integrated: The major problem is that they continue to speak of the advend of the novel around 1700 - which contradicts the entire article. If anything we mightspeak of a new debate about "novels" and "romances" rising in the 1670s after we had something similar in Chaucer's days. There is no Before Novels in the sense Ian Watt implied or in the sense Paul J. Hunter supported with his book under the title. It only works if one says: These "novels" published before Defoe were no "novels" and if one effectivly avoids them (by focussing on the novel after Defoe). The paragraphs offered remarks on the newness of sequels in the 18th century - said without much knowledge about medieval and early modern fiction and culminated in a number of judgements about the creativity of male and female authors compared, which I read as strongly gender biasd. See for the detaild discussion User talk:Klkopish#Sequels of 18th-Century Novels --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sequels of 18th-Century Novels 

message: When talking about Amadis de Gaula as the first best-seller it's not correct to state that the book is portuguese. Even if the origins of the narration are not clear, in the wikipedia entrance to this novel it's considered an older version from Joao de Lobeira, who himself based is lost work on an even older castillian narration. Anyway wether the origin is portuguese or castillian, the book which was a best-seller was the verion from Garcia de Montalvo, and it's difficult to believe the older versions from the XVth century were written in the same style). So this text: "The second major development is fixed to a single title: The Portuguese Amadis de Gaula became the first best-seller of modern fiction"  should be changed to "The second major development is fixed to a single title: The Spanish Amadis de Gaula, by García Montalvo became the first best-seller of modern fiction" --J1sp2sp (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: appreciated and changed accordingly, --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:44, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  an error in the page: "The second major development is fixed to a single title: The Portuguese Amadis de Gaula became the first best-seller of modern fiction" 

message: Much of the article (what I read of it, anyway) appears to be belabouring the separation of "novels" from "historical writing". And yet, for the modern reader, at least, the salient distinction should surely be between the novel and the romance. 
I guess my questions must be:
*Historically, was there a stage where novels struggled to distinguish themselves from histories? 
:..actually not. The word novel meant news, in several languages it stood for news papers. The process is rather that historians struggled to distance themselves from these titles - mostly by discrediting them as romances, pure invention. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The late 17th century positively had debate about the superiority of "novels" (short stories of intrigues) over long "romances" of love and heroism. The debate reaches back into Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (where we have a controversy over different types of stories) and it leads to Ian Watt's Rise of The Novel (1959). --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

text: I don't think there is an exact point they separated. In fact, in much of Europe no separation even occurred; the word "romance", or equivalent, is still used for the modern novel in many places. I understand that in English it essentially came down to marketing. Zazaban (talk) 06:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. English speakers refer to "romance" when they think of cheap love stories. The other stuff is "novel". Continental readers think of Romane and use the label for anything long and fictional from Heliodorus to Defoe or Joyce. The differentiation is here e.g. in German between a trivial market (Trivialliteratur) and a literary production. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Which brings me to my next point: is the novel a fundamental category of (prose) literature in its own right, or is it just a modern sub-category? I mean, a literary form that only appeared in one part of the world a couple of centuries ago doesn't seem to have much claim as a universal literary form, does it? And no, I don't intend to debate the subject here. I'm just wondering what the accepted wisdom / conventional interpretation is of the positioning of the novel, and how this should be reflected in the article. I find this article far too discursive to figure out what is basic here. 203.169.48.225 (talk) 10:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, your question is complex - it has the potential to inspire a conference of literary historians. I am already happy if the article has a horizon to reach these complexities. (Indeed I agree with your proposition: the modern novel [a novel to be debated by literary critics and to be honoured as a work of creativity] is a western product, something that rose against the backdrop of a market of loves stories, secondly against the backdrop of a market of dubious histories, and thirdly against the backdrop of true histories discussed by historians) --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Novel vs historical writing 

message: The article Novita has been proposed for deletion  because of the following concern:
:A search for references found no support in published (gBooks) WP:RS for the content of this article. I did not find novita used in the fashion indicated by the article. Fails WP:V and WP:N
While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing  will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist.  The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 18:04, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Proposed deletion|Proposed deletion]] of [[Novita]]

message: An image used in this article, File:2009 new novels in a Berlin bookshop.JPG, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests August 2011 
;What should I do?
Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so.
* If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use)
* If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used.
This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 18:34, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: File:2009 new novels in a Berlin bookshop.JPG Nominated for Deletion

message: The article states, in the section about Romances, that "the Great Vowel Shift affected almost all European languages."  I have only ever heard it discussed in English.  The basic point remains, that prose is easier to translate than verse, if one wants to translate the verse form too, but I believe the reference to the Great Vowel Shift is inaccurate here.  Wikipedia's own page on the GVS, linked, only discusses it in English, so one of the two pages is clearly in need of editing.
66.211.206.44 (talk) 17:40, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, yes 'The Great Vowel Shift is English, but I don't know of a Europaen language (besides Icelandic, I guess), that can still read 13th-century verse and preserve rhythm and rhyme. German cannot and English cannot, give me languages that can. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:05, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great Vowel Shift  

message: It seems strange to me that people like Apuleius, Chariton, Petronius Arbiter, Longus and the like never get mention in discussion of the formative period of the Western novel.  Most of them are fluff, I won't deny, but the The Golden Ass is legitimate literature, written in prose and of book length, from the 2nd century AD.  It's a secondary text in the tradition of Latin classics, but not an unimportant one by any measure, and I feel it should at least get a mention as an early - if exceptional - instance of the art form.  108.18.215.24 (talk) 01:57, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek and Roman Novels 

message: Kafka's The Metamorphosis is mentioned, but is not a novel, rather a short story. The summary mentions cockroach, whereas the original doesn't define the creature. I suggest to drop the work in this context. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:17, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kafka 

message: I happened across this term for the first time in this article and it seems unnecessarily pejorative and insulting of genre fiction.  I googled it and nothing is coming up, so I question that it exists at all as a term.  Surely 'popular fiction' or 'genre fiction' would be superior.  And incidentally, the genre of 'literature', characterised by linguistic rewards (as opposed to love, adventure, etc) is referred to as 'high literature' in this article.  Again, I'm puzzled by this reference, as the shelves in the bookshop for those books are just the same height as the normal ones. :-) Seriously, is that a real term? Summerdoor (talk) 21:02, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is 'trivial literature' a recognised term? 

message: ;what is it? 
So, what is a modern novel?  Brusegadi (talk) 21:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modern novel Talk pages: from merge 

message: This page is not readable because it is not organized. Topics move from one to another in continuous succession but seemingly randomly. There is no chronological order. You have one topic discussing 19th century novels, then the topic that follows starts discussing 17th century novels, then somewhere down the line, you have topic that discusses 19th century novels again (saying the same thing), and then the next topic it goes back to discussing some aspect of 18th, 17, 15th century novels. Then you have another topic that talks about 19th century novels again. The topics do not relate to one another. The section on 20th century and 21 century starts off by talking about the demise of the novel and the advent of ebooks and harry potter. I did not know those were issues in the 1900s-1930s.
It is utterly confusing and the article, as long as it is, and being arranged in this arbitrary manner, is not navigable. 
JohnWycliff (talk) 16:39, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you take a look into the Table of Contents. I gave dates in all headlines to give you the sequence of individual developments. Yet, it's not a strict sequence as some genres move on. We have overlapping developments. If you can offer a better structure - I'd love to see it. :) --Olaf Simons (talk) 19:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: PS. If you think of an article of periods, I can give you the next problem: Which periodisation would you like to have: the French, the English or the German? And we have not spoken about the rest of the world then. The alternative could of course be an article of centuries - with repetitions like: "And also in the 17th century we have satirical romances, they develop now towards...", to be then reiterated with the next centuy and the next to come - that would be really really messy. Do not take a history of English literature as the simple model, that will not work here on global Wikipedia... --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:02, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  A page that talks about Harry Potter, Salmon Rushdie, Orwell, and ebooks in the history section before it talks about James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett is highly confusing. That at the very least should be changed even though similar thing happen a lot in this article.75.68.109.217 (talk) 21:18, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

text: Can I suggest spitting the mess into a separate "History of the novel" page per the split in scholarship, between the "history of" and other conversations. Reworking the main page from the grounds up would vastly improve it, and we could point towards various prominent concepts or themes within the "idea of novel" that way we can think about broad concepts like "novelist," "genres," "criticism", "publishing", etc with a smaller summary section holding onto "history" with a Template:Main to the history page. The dominance of the page by history dominates the stuff that most people care about, and you are right: the history section is muddled, and I think would benefit from not trying to address other problems related to the idea of "novel" within the history, Sadads (talk) 01:48, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, sections on the material (and now digital) culture surrounding the production of novels, economics, etc. Sadads (talk) 01:51, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

text: Other way around: create a new article that is titled History of the novel, where we copy most of the current content, and summarize that in a much shorter section title "History", and focus the main article "Novel" on the other subheadings I mention above. (Sorry if I was unclear). That way we don't "have" to deal with the muddle of the history right now, but can rather make sure the novel page acts like a portal to other novel-related articles and content, kind of like Literature, Author, or Novelist. Also, I agree with you on the section headers. Do whatever you feel bold enough to handle, I have been thinking about this article for ages but hadn't really had the time or focus. I don't really have time to be dealing with this page right now, working on Novelist, grad school and teaching, but plan to come back to it in a month or two, but if you make changes, I am completely in support, and will keep an eye on my watchlist, Sadads (talk) 14:45, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What a disjointed mess! 

message: This article seems to be controlled by a single author, who considers it 'his' article, and seems to come into the talk page, responding to all comments as though he is the ultimate decision maker in the content and form of this article. Also seconding the above notion that the article is a disjointed and borderline unreadable mess. From comments on the talk page I get the impression it was designed by the aforementioned editor as a textbook of sorts for a course he teaches, which is grossly abusing this website. 72.28.82.250 (talk) 22:16, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. This is a serious - structural - Wikipedia-Problem. Try to win other authors. I'd love to see the Stanford Literary Lab revise this. Their people are doing great work at the moment. I wrote it when I was teaching the history of the novel at a German University. I am afraid, my colleagues will have serious problems if they should enter the game - not because I'd "protect" the article, but because their authorship would remain opaque. As a scholar I'd say it was hazardous to write this. It cost me an article in a prestigious German Enzyclopedia (that had been accepted for publication before someone realised that I had also been writing for Wikipedia), and it did not start the next round of scholars entering the project - which I had hoped to initiate. --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:34, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serious WP:OWN problems. 

message: The article says: "Research of the last decades has, however, contested views that it was Robinson Crusoe's realism that ended the sway of "French baroque romances"." Defoe may not be the first who wrote realistic stories, but it seems like it was his novel that represents the genre's final breakthrough. Gulliver's Travels, The Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island and The Blue Lagoon all seem to have been influenced by it. From articles on the net: "From the first page, "Robinson Crusoe" conveys the documentary power of courtroom testimony—sometimes dry, but brightened enough by the promise of surprise to keep its audience following along. Early critics—and some more recent ones—have accused Defoe of going too far in creating the novel's solid sense of actuality." Fiction as Authentic as Fact And: "Many of the elements of the modern novel attributed to Defoe -- e.g. the beginnings of psychological realism and a consistent narrative voice -- were anticipated by women writers. Defoe's contribution was in putting them all together and creating out of these elements sustained prose narratives blending physical and psychological realism. Jonathan Swift produced an enduring classic as well with Gulliver's Travels, but despite his brilliance it is the merchant Daniel Defoe, a journalist who saw writing as "a considerable branch of the English commerce" (Essay upon Literature, 1726), who is considered the father of the English novel." Aphra Behn and the Beginnings of a Female Narrative Voice 2A02:FE0:C900:1:CDDB:6BFF:A7E8:FC62 (talk) 16:46, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Robinson Crusoe

message: There is a template at the top of the article stating that it was translated from another language, etc, etc. 
What language? 
Is there a link to the original article, so I can find out whether I might be able to help? Dratman (talk) 02:40, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Dratman: It was obviously translated from German - the German version is in German Wikipedia. I don't think you have to speak German to make the text flow better! It just needs a little editing, the translation doesn't need to be checked for accuracy. Melody Lavender (talk) 20:15, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The German equivalent is actually neither the original nor a translation or source. The first author was and is German and brought his native language into his formulations. He is always glad to see his sentences made easier. And much of the difficulty is probably his scholarly background. He was giving courses at the English Institute at the University of Oldenburg when he did this, and he is still thankful for the support of Wikipedians on the other side of the Atlantic who revised his work passage for passage overnight at the time. --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:18, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  This was translated from what language? 

message: The following sentence reads like an unacknowledged quotation, and presents a rather biased view, that is not appropriate for an encyclopaedia article. It would be fine as a quotation. There also seems be an error in tense in the final clause -- shouldn't it read "would lead"?
::Their subject matter deserved less credit than the worst medieval tales of Arthurian knighthood. If the Amadis had troubled Don Quixote with curious fantasies, the new romantic tales were worse: they became nightmares, they explored sexual fantasies, they led to the end of human civilization. Rwood128 (talk) 15:36, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pushing art to its limits: Romanticism, 1770–1850 --an inappropriately biased sentence 

message: Does anyone else think that there's an excessive and therefore distracting use of images in this article? Rwood128 (talk) 17:47, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the number is a problem: I use a high resolution screen and they aren't too jammed together. However, I think it might be worth improving their captions to better contextualize the article's content. This article is actually about as illustrated as most articles should be, to create a more multimedia experience of articles, a big part of User design for newer webpages. Sadads (talk) 18:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Further thoughts: 
* In paricular there's too many images on the left side.
* Could a gallery of images be created at the foot?  
* The image "Model of 20th-century literary communication" is a good example of a badly placed image on the left. 
Rwood128 (talk)
I took the liberty of moving most images to the right -- hope that I haven't offended anyone. It no longer looks -- to my eye -- so cluttered. But there are still too many images, and especially too many look- alikes.Rwood128 (talk) 21:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Excessive use of images? 

message: But for the first paragraph this section makes little sense. There are some interesting ideas about history and fiction buried here, but the writer is unable to articulate them. In particular connecting bridges between ideas and sentences are missing. I therefore suggest, most of it should be deleted. Rwood128 (talk) 19:01, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  A fictional narrative 

message: I think this should also be said. Nietzsche's legendary Zarathustra is a prime example of this, also Joyce can most easily be put into this description. 5.43.183.150 (talk) 20:47, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds like an interesting aspect of the novel, though I don't think we need a new section (if that is the suggestion) -- there are too many problems with this article at the moment (can you help?). Not just Joyce, but also Virginia Woolf, John Cowper Powys, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, etc. Rwood128 (talk) 22:15, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Novel in prose poetry? 

message: This not a comment on the recent change, but on the ugliness of this heading in both versions (academic jargon?). I'm hoping to work on 'the rise of the novel' section as a whole, which, I'd suggest, is too dense/detailed, and maybe the heading can be deleted by combining the 'Legitimating the novel' section with another. Rwood128 (talk) 14:50, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legitimatising the novel--ugly wording 

message: Large sections of this prolix article are incomprehensible and full of some kind of trendy pseudo-academic, lefty diction. An excellent model for an encyclopedia article on the novel is Anthony Burgess’s article on the subject in Encyclopedia Britannica. Evidently written in the 60s or early 70s it still holds up and Britannica has not seen fit to change a word of it. I suggest people get together and start a new article from scratch. 
A good example of what I mean is this early sentence:
‘While Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel came into being in the early 18th century, the genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years",  with historical roots in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and in the tradition of the novella.’
That’s 59 words in one sentence, and with a difficult structure of subordinate clauses.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edruezzi (talk • contribs) 20:34, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken the liberty of moving this new section from the beginning of the Talk section to the end, which is the appropriate place.Rwood128 (talk) 21:23, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I have begun trying to improve things -- this will be fairly rough work that will need further editing. Maybe a new article on the 18th century novel might be created by someone? Rwood128 (talk) 11:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: See also  Rwood128 (talk) 12:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Good Candidate for a Complete Rewrite 

message: There are sections like these that need to be reduced to a sentence or two and integrated into other sections (because they are wordy and digress too far from the main topic). But can such section be saved (are they worth saving) by moving them into other articles or creating new articles? Rwood128 (talk) 12:23, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The renamed section 'Literary market place' seems to consist mainly of poorly organized, original research. It should, therefore, be deleted. Are there any objections? Rwood128 (talk) 17:32, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Literary market place; The modern individual, etc 

message: I have changed the heading to 'Nationalism in literature', but suggest now that this section should in fact, either be moved to the article 'Nationalism', or made into a new article -- and therefore deleted here. Is this acceptable and which option is the best to follow? Rwood128 (talk) 14:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I've left a comment on Talk Nationalism  Rwood128 (talk) 14:20, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: On further thought, as this looks like it is original research, I propose that it should be deleted. There is a brief discussion of national literature in the previous section that links to Nationalism. Is this acceptable? Rwood128 (talk) 13:01, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The creation of national literatures 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Novel. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090116181432/http://www.danbrown.com:80/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html to http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 18:20, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Novel. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071223085813/http://www.rwanational.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics to http://www.rwanational.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 04:10, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Novel. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101203140439/http://www.rwanational.org/cs/home to http://www.rwanational.org/cs/home
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:30, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I'm new to editing on Wikipedia. Started around a week ago. My interests are mostly 20-21st century literature, but not limited to that. But my primary editing interest is to create pages for neglected books and to add cited critical reviews to the many pages of great works that lack them. Is there a forum on here where Wikipedians sharing an interest in fiction discuss page and editing ideas? Wasn't sure if this was a forum like that due to it seeming more formal. I'm looking for a less formal forum where people chat about their various editing projects and can talk about potential page ideas. ANDROMITUS (talk) 19:53, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forum For Novel-Focused Wikipedians 

message: I note that the French "also use the terms récit and nouvelle to denote particular kinds of novel","Roman", Dictionary of literary terms & literary theory, ed. J. A. Cuddon (revised C. E. Preston), London: Penguin, 1999, P. 757. and will try and add something. Rwood128 (talk) 22:30, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The French 

message: Some potential resources to help improve this article.
"Examples of romance novels are Walter Scott's Rob Roy (1817), Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844-4), Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and an important line of American narratives ... Poe ...  Cooper ... Hawthorne ... Melville ... Faulkner ... Bellow." (M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (7th edition), p. 192. Abrams also has this very useful comment: "A common distinction ... is that between two basic types of prose fiction: the realistic novel (which is the novel proper) and the romance" (p.192). It would have ben better if his comment had been more neutral.
*Re Melville and Moby Dick this is worth noting (from the Wikipedia article):
:::he described the book to his English publisher as "a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries," and promised it would be done by the fall.Herman Melville in  
*Nathaniel Hawthorne on Romance
:::When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience. The former - while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart - has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent of the writers own choosing or creation. If he thinks fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights, and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture, he will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privilege here stated, and especially to mingle the marvellous rather as a slight, delicate and evanescent flavour, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime, even if he disregarded this caution. (Preface to The House of Seven Gables, 1851)
Writers like Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Meredith, John Cowper Powys can be added to the list.
*"many would probably agree that Conrad was a supreme 'romancer', especially in Lord Jim (1900), Romance (1903) and The Shadow Line (1917)." J, A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (1999), pp. 761-2.
Gothic novelists were also romancers: "Succeeding writers who produced Gothic romances include: Matthew ("Monk") Lewis, William Godwin, and Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley, whose Frankenstein is a striking performance in the tradition" (William Harmon & C, Hugh Holmam, A Handbook to Literature (7th edition), p. 237. Ann Radcliff's "five romances" are also mentioned.
Useful looking sources:
*A Companion to Romance
*A Natural History of the Romance novel
*Both Walter Scott and Nathaniel Hawthorne have written on the romance form.
*The article Historical Romance. The article Romance novel focuses largely on genre fiction rather than literature. 
Rwood128 (talk) 12:15, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romance novel 

message: I don't know why this user keeps obsessed with putting in the lead that novels are realist depictions of society that do not cover marvellous or uncommon events and then keeps deleting sources that suggest otherwise. The lead now includes both the opinion of authors that held that a novel is a realist form of fiction, and those (the majority) of literary critics that consider that novels do not need to be a realist depic of society and can be focused on marvellous or uncommon events.James343e (talk) 23:26, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Novel is not  asynonym with "a fiction work that is realist depiction of society and is not focused marvellous or uncommon events" 

message: Your revert for vandalism really made me laugh. Thanks. Laughter is much needed.  
PS Check my editing record. I'm not your enemy. Rwood128 (talk) 23:40, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I appreciate your collaborative effort, when we work in group we can improve the page.James343e (talk) 00:13, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: I didn't touch the article but I thought I'd add two cents here about the general lack on consensus I have noted over decades regarding the terms "novel" and "novella." I have seen 1,000 page books referred to as novellas, and I've got several books barely reaching 100 pages in my collection - adaptations of children's films with less word count than this article - referenced as "novels." Then factor in novelizations (think the Doctor Who novelizations by Target Books) and it gets confusing. And that doesn't even take into account academic "gatekeeping" where to some nothing short of Dickens qualifies as a novel; everything else is a novella. 136.159.160.121 (talk) 16:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Examples, with citations, would be helpful, 136.159.160.121. Rwood128 (talk) 16:34, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Debate over terminology

message: I'm sorry that this may seem trivial, but I really don't think JK Rowling's image should be on this page given her political views, bigotry and hatred. I suggest that we replace her image with another author's.
:netverk (talk) 04:12, 06 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: I think we should remove the picture of JK Rowling

message: The redirect Histories (history of the novel) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  Steel1943 (talk) 21:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Histories (history of the novel)]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: The redirect The novel has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  Steel1943 (talk) 21:14, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:The novel]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: The redirect Candidates for the first novel has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  Steel1943 (talk) 21:18, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Candidates for the first novel]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: The article is mostly about the Western European tradition of the novel. I, therefore, suggest that the discussion of Asian novels needs to be expanded, or the title changed. Rwood128 (talk) 16:40, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Western novel