novel

Narrative text, normally of a substantial length and in the form of prose describing a fictional and sequential story

Also known as novels

Instance of: literary form
1
Sources
1.owlcation.com/humanities/What-is-the-Difference-Between-Genre-and-Form-Are-Genre-and-Form-the-Same
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Subclass of: work of fiction
, narration
, prose
+1 more
Part of: novel sequence

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the Italian: novella for 'new', 'news', or 'short story ', itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term romance. Such romances should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love. M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The romance, on the other hand, encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. In reality, such works are nevertheless also commonly called novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Overview

All data

113 statements · 12% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Name in kana: ちょうへんしょうせつ
Properties for this type: author
publisher
genre
Category for eponymous categories: Category:Wikipedia categories named after novels
Different from: short novel
novella
xiaoshuo
Riwaya
Practiced by: novelist
Hashtag: novels
1
Sources
1.“#novels - Twitter Search / Twitter”twitter.com/hashtag/novels?src=hashtag_clickRetrieved 2023-01-01
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On other databases

83 identifiers linking novel across the web's reference databases

Data quality

113

statements

12%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 23, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). novel (Q8261). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/novel-Q8261