Novella
A novella is a narrative work of prose fiction shorter in both length and breadth than a novel, but longer than a short story. Typically, novellas dramatize individual events, or a short series of events, such as a day in the life, or an important turning point in a character’s life. While most literary designations typically do not have specific requirements in terms of length, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America award their Nebula Science Fiction Prize for novellas with length 60 to 130 pages or 17,500 to 40,000 words.
Like its counterpart “novel,” the English word “novella” is derived from the Italian word “novella” (plural: “novelle”) meaning a tale; piece of news. Novellas as a literary form emerged in the early fourteenth century in Italian Renaissance literature. Some famous and popular novellas include Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
History
The novella as a literary form largely did not exist until fourteenth century Italy, where it began due primarily to the work of Giovanni Boccaccio and his Decameron (1353). The Decameron was a collection of 100 brief novelle—10 stories each by 10 different characters all traveling from Florence to the Fiesole Hills to escape the Black Death—-following the strict etymology of a tale or piece of news. Boccaccio's form was mimicked by the French Queen Margerite de Navarre, whose Heptameron (1559) consisted of 72 short tales. In the English language, the earliest well-known example is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which, though composed mainly of verse and not prose, was a late fourteenth century homage to the Decameron.
However noteworthy these achievements were, the novella did not gain wide acceptance literary form until the eighteenth century, when German writers began to formulate regulations regarding the novella—-none of which concerned length. According to these Germans, the novelle (as opposed to the novel) is a story of indeterminate length focusing specifically on one event or conflict. Most often these led to a Wendepunkt, an unexpected turning point in the tale, which resulted in a logical, provocative conclusion. Though this format is not universally replicated by all authors and literary academics, the designation of a single conflict has particular significance to the novella as an individual form.
Novella versus Novel
In German, the word for ‘novel’ is Roman, while the word for ‘novella’ is Novelle. Similarly, the word roman translates as the English ‘novel’ in Dutch, French, Swedish, Danish, and Romanian languages, giving it particular significance over the novella as the established, premier literary form. As opposed to the novel’s unlimited complexity, especially when introducing conflicts, themes, and events, the novella’s focus on a singular moral significance or climactic event tends to make it less structurally complex and shorter in length. The advantages of this are described by Robert Silverberg in the introduction to his anthology Sailing to Byzantium (2000):
“[The novella] is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms...it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.”
Sometimes novellas are easy to spot thanks to declarative titling by the authors, for example Steve Martin’s 2000 book Shopgirl: A Novella or Don DeLillo’s 2001 book Pafko at the Wall: A Novella. However, some popular novellas are often referred to in practice—incorrectly—as novels. The following well-known works are examples of novellas mistakenly referred to as novels:
- Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1902)
- The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1897)
- Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1912)
- The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1898)
- Armageddon 2419 C.E. by Philip Francis Nowlan (1928)
Links
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Allaire, Gloria, The Italian Novella, New York: Routledge, 2003.
- Silverberg, Robert, Sailing to Byzantium, New York: I Books, 2004.
- Springer, Mary Doyle, Forms of the Modern Novella, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
See also
- Literature
- Novel
- Novelette
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