Slavonic Studies 2A The Rise of the Novel 22 Oct 2002
  1. The term ‘novel’, derived from the Italian ‘novella’ (lit: ‘a new thing’), was not used by Poles to define a longish prose work. Before 1840, the current term was ‘romance’ (‘romans’), meaning ‘unlikely tales, mostly concerning adventures in love’ (Krasicki, 1781). The Polish term ‘powieść’ (lit. ‘a thing told/the action of telling’), later used in the sense of ‘novel’, initially defined a short narrative work. According to Linde’s great dictionary (1807-14), a ‘novel’ involved ‘the oral transmission of information, the activity of telling a story, a narrative, piece of news, gossip, moral, parable’, hence not so fictional as a ‘romance’. In the ‘romance’ the sentimental element came to the fore, whereas a ‘powieść’ provided an authentic image of reality and gave priority to truth over invention. By the Positivist era, ‘romance’ was no longer used in a neutral or positive sense; instead, ‘powieść’ had come to dominate.
  2. Modern individualism lay at the basis of the 18th-c. form, whereas 19th-c. developments provided a wider frame, setting individual conflicts with the collective in a historical perspective. The novel would attempt/pretend to provide a comprehensive experience of reality. Central to this illusion was the strategy of MIMESIS, allegedly presenting the ‘truth’ about life. Figures and events arranged in a chronological, causal and spatial order created a plot framework with a great capacity to encompass various kinds of material and themes. The use of prose supplied a sense of proximity to ‘real life’ and the way people actually spoke. Thus, the novel generally underlined its non-literary and ‘natural’ status (‘illusory realism’). The presentation of characters’ biographies, the behaviour of human beings, and the socio-cultural and moral conditions shaping life emerged as the novel’s dominant features. The form was particularly open to new discoveries and theories regarding human beings, drawn from the social sciences and psychology, from which it was but a short step to the promotion of biological theories typical of NATURALISM.
  3. The appearance of the novel form in Polish culture dates back to the Enlightenment: Ignacy Krasicki’s The Adventures of Mr Nicholas Wisdom (1776) followed in the vein of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Early Polish novels, frequently written in epistolary form, laid stress on education, in line with the social and political needs of their day. Although the Romantics distrusted the objective tendencies of the genre, it was in the period 1825-30 that prose fiction began to make headway, with some 50 novels being published (as many as in the previous half-century). The major novellist of the mid-century, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812-87), wrote largely (and prolifically) historical works dealing with Poland’s sometimes inglorious past.
  4. In 1846, the philosopher August Cieszkowski’s pamphlet On the Modern Romance first postulated the ‘thesis novel’. He emphasised the social purpose (‘dążność’) that the work was supposed to play, namely to reveal injustice and promote awareness of social problems, in the process pricking the conscience of its readers to do something about the matters identified. Following the 1863 Uprising, the novel became the dominant literary form, and initially consisted of a ‘retributionary trend’, decrying the sorry effects of Romantic resistance. From 1870 on, heavy emphasis was placed on contemporary issues, and literature began to propagate the social and economic views of those writers usually employed as journalists and supporting the Positivist movement. Thus the thesis novel came into its own, with key works such as Marta (1873) by principal exponents like Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841-1910).
  5. The press played a major role in the expansion of the novel in the late 19th c. Novels appeared as installments in daily and weekly newspapers, prior to publication as separate works. This, in turn, influenced their internal logic, necessitating the inclusion of surprises, the posing and solution of mysteries, event-studded narratives, and often a multi-stranded plot involving flashbacks – all with a view to stimulating and holding readers’ interest.
  6. The genre reached the peak of its refinement (‘mature’ realism’) in the final two decades of the 19th-c., in such works as The Doll (1890) by Bolesław Prus (1847-1912) and Orzeszkowa’s On the Niemen (1888). The promotion of objectivity forced a break with didactic, romance and sentimental conventions. The general absence of a narrator suggested that the novel was devoid of any artificial mediation, and that whoever was narrating events did not obstruct their truth. Positivists generally disregarded the historical novel (Prus’s The Pharoah, 1897, apart) with the notable exception of the most successful Polish novellist, Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916), whose mid-period works, With Fire and Sword (1884) and Trilogy cycle (1880s), exhibited a more traditionalist, patriotic outlook and were designed as national ‘confidence-boosting’ literature.