Shape and form

During the eighteenth century a number of innovations in both subject matter and narrative technique took shape. The novelists had to reconcile the demands of narrative order and the realistic portrayal. The art of fiction often involves the close imitation of true narratives. The novelists adopted various techniques in order to present the form and content of their works. Some of them, like Defoe, Defoe adopted the episodic technique, which more often than not produced a loose baggy form of a novel, without much sense of narrative order or progression or organic unity. Later Fielding self-consciously uses Chapters and Books as in his novel Joseph Andrews. This conflict between the demands of realistic presentation and aesthetic narrative order is evident in Sterne's anti-novel Tristram Shandy. Sterne blasts the conventions of the Novel even before this genre has had a chance to become a settled form.

The genre's new understanding of itself resulted in the first metafictional experiment, pressing against its limitations. Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767) rejected continuous narration. It expanded the author-reader communication from the preface into the plot itself – Tristram Shandy develops as a conversation between the narrative voice and his audience.

Realism.

A key concern in the eighteenth century novel is its preoccupation with realism, and realistic depiction of society. Broadly speaking, ‘realism’ is a term that can be applied to the accurate depiction of the everyday life of a place or period in a literarily work. When the term is applied to the works of the eighteenth century, however, it usually refers to a writer’s accuracy in portraying a character or characters form a low socio-economic class. This is visible in Defoe's and Fielding's attempts to make their works as realistic as possible. For that purpose they use the word ‘history’ while introducing their works. And it is for this purpose that they employ the first person narrative technique as in Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe. Another tactic used by the novelists to make their works look realistic was the use of epistolary form, most notably in the works of Richardson, as in his novel Pamela (which was burlesqued by Fielding in Shamela). They also consciously used anti-romance forms as a means of asserting the realism of their writing. These writers largely used the model established by Cervantes in his anti-romance. One way of asserting the value of the new novel technique was to show how its fidelity to the "real" was more accurate than earlier forms, such as romance, chronicle, fable, etc. Richardson and Defoe are the first major writers in English literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legends or previous literature, and thus, differ considerably from Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton. In the eighteenth century, the novel’s use of the non-traditional plots was a manifestation of realism. For example, when Defoe began to write novels, he did not take much notice of the prevalent critical theory which tended to incline towards the use of traditional plots. In doing so Defoe started a new trend of realism in fiction.

John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ is considered by many the precursor of the novel. But his piece is an allegory and hence far from realism. On the other hand, Defoe’s works employ the realistic mode. In the words of Wyatt, “Bunyan undoubtedly showed that a narrative could be conceived and carried through with consistency and vigour, and interspersed with animated dialogue …. [but] Defoe selected secular subjects, banished allegory and limited the historical so closely that his fictions were easily …. Called ‘narrative biography’” (1) Wyatt quotes the editor of Read’s Journal who said in 1718 that Defoe exhibited the ‘agreeableness of the style … the little art he is only a master of, of forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth,” and then adds, “an impression comes in our minds that ‘this simple honest fellow is telling us the true story.’” (2)