Anovella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than mostnovels, but longer than mostnovelettes andshort stories. The English wordnovella derives from the Italiannovella meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts.
The Italian term is a feminine ofnovello, which meansnew, similarly to the English wordnews.[1]Merriam-Webster defines a novella as "a work of fiction intermediate in length and complexity between ashort story and anovel".[1]There is disagreement regarding the number of pages or words necessary for a story to be considered a novella, a short story or a novel.[2] TheScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association defines a novella'sword count to be between 17,500 and 40,000 words;[3][4] at 250 words per page, this equates to 70 to 160 pages.See below for definitions used by other organisations.
The novella as a literary genre began developing in the Italian literature of the earlyRenaissance, principally byGiovanni Boccaccio, author ofThe Decameron (1353).[5]The Decameron featured 100 tales (named novellas) told by ten people (seven women and three men) fleeing theBlack Death, by escaping fromFlorence to theFiesole hills in 1348. This structure was then imitated by subsequent authors, notably the French queenMarguerite de Navarre, whoseHeptaméron (1559) included 72 original French tales and was modeled after the structure ofThe Decameron.
The Italian genre novella grew out of a rich tradition of medieval short narrative forms. It took its first major form in the anonymous late 13th centuryLibro di novelle et di bel parlar gentile, known asIl Novellino, and reached its culmination withThe Decameron. Followers of Boccaccio such asGiovanni Fiorentino,Franco Sacchetti,Giovanni Sercambi andSimone de' Prodenzani continued the tradition into the early 15th century. The Italian novella influenced many later writers, includingShakespeare.[6]
Novellas were also written in Spain.Miguel de Cervantes' bookNovelas ejemplares (1613) added innovation to the genre with more attention to the depiction of human character and social background.[7]
Not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries did writers fashion the novella into a literary genre structured by precepts and rules, generally in arealistic mode. At that time, the Germans were the most active writers of thenovelle (German: "Novelle"; plural: "Novellen").[7] For the German writer, a novella is a fictional narrative of indeterminate length—a few pages to hundreds—restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point (Wendepunkt), provoking a logical but surprising end.Novellen tend to contain a concrete symbol, which is the narrative's focal point.[citation needed]
The novella influenced the development of theshort story and thenovel throughout Europe.[8] In the late 19th centuryHenry James was one of the first English language critics to use the term novella for a story that was longer and more complex than a short story, but shorter than a novel.[7]
In English speaking countries the modernnovella is rarely defined as a distinct literary genre, but is often used as a term for a short novel.[9]
A novella generally features fewerconflicts than anovel, yet more complex conflicts than ashort story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. Novellas may or may not be divided into chapters (good examples of those with chapters areAnimal Farm byGeorge Orwell andThe War of the Worlds byH. G. Wells), and white space is often used to divide the sections, something less common in short stories. Novellas may be intended to be read at a single sitting, like short stories, and thus produce a unitary effect on the reader.[10] According toWarren Cariou, "The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description.[11]
The termnovel, borrowed from the Italiannovella, originally meant "any of a number of tales or stories making up a larger work; a short narrative of this type, a fable", and was then many times used in the plural,[12] reflecting the usage as inThe Decameron and its followers. Usage of the more italianatenovella in English seems to be a bit younger.[13] The differentiation of the two terms seems to have occurred only in the 19th century, following the new fashion of the novella in German literature. In 1834,John Lothrop Motley could still speak of "Tieck's novels (which last are a set of exquisite little tales, novels in the original meaning of the word)".[14] But when the termnovella was used it was already clear that a rather short and witty form was intended: "The brief Novella has ever been a prodigious favorite with the nation…since the days of Boccaccio."[15] In 1902,William Dean Howells wrote: "Few modern fictions of the novel's dimensions…have the beauty of form many a novella embodies."[16]
Sometimes, as with other genres, the genre name is mentioned in the title of a single work (compare theDivine Comedy orGoethe'sDas Märchen). Austrian writerStefan Zweig'sDie Schachnovelle (1942) (literally, "The Chess Novella", but translated in 1944 asThe Royal Game) is an example of a title naming its genre. This might be suggestive of the genre's historicization.[citation needed]
Commonly, longer novellas are referred to as novels; Robert Louis Stevenson'sStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)[17] and Joseph Conrad'sHeart of Darkness (1899)[18] are sometimes called novels, as are manyscience fiction works such as H. G. Wells'The War of the Worlds (1897) and Philip Francis Nowlan'sArmageddon 2419 A.D. (1928). Less often, longer works are referred to as novellas. The subjectivity of the parameters of the novella genre is indicative of its shifting and diverse nature as an art form.[citation needed] In her 2010Open Letters Monthly series, "A Year With Short Novels", Ingrid Norton criticizes the tendency to make clear demarcations based purely on a book's length, saying that "any distinctions that begin with an objective and external quality like size are bound to be misleading."[19]
Stephen King, in his introduction toDifferent Seasons, a 1982 collection of four novellas, notes the difficulties of selling a novella in the commercial publishing world, since it does not fit the typical length requirements of either magazine or book publishers.[20] Despite these problems, however, the novella's length provides unique advantages; in the introduction to a novella anthology titledSailing to Byzantium,Robert Silverberg writes:
[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.[21]
In his essay, "Briefly, the case for the novella", Canadian authorGeorge Fetherling (who wrote the novellaTales of Two Cities) said that to reduce the novella to nothing more than a short novel is like "insisting that apony is a baby horse".[22]
The sometimes blurry definition between a novel and a novella can create controversy, as was the case with British writerIan McEwan'sOn Chesil Beach (2007). The author described it as a novella, but the panel for theMan Booker Prize in 2007 qualified the book as a "short novel".[23] Thus, this "novella" was shortlisted for an award for best original novel. A similar case is found with a much older work of fiction:The Call of the Wild (1903) byJack London. This book, by modern standards, is short enough and straightforward enough to qualify as a novella. However, historically, it has been regarded as a novel.[citation needed]
Dictionaries definenovelette similarly tonovella, sometimes identically,[24] sometimes with a disparaging sense of being trivial or sentimental.[25] Someliterary awards have a longer "novella" and a shorter "novelette" category, with a distinction based onword count. Among awards, a range between 17,500 and 40,000 words is commonly used for the novella category, whereas 7,500–17,500 is commonly used for novelettes.[26][27][28] According toThe Writer, a novelette is approximately between 7,000 and 20,000 words in length, anything shorter being considered a short story.[29]
This list contains those novellas that are widely considered to be the best examples of the genre, through their appearance on multiple best-of lists.[30][31][32][33][34][35]
Someliterary awards include a "best novella" award and sometimes a separate "best novelette" award, separately from "best short story" or "best novel". The distinction between these categories may be entirely byword count.
^Smith, Jack (26 October 2018)."The novella: Stepping stone to success or waste of time?".The Writer.Archived from the original on 28 October 2020. Retrieved15 October 2020.A novella typically starts at about 20,000 words and tops out at 50,000, which is the minimum length for a short novel. There's no mathematical exactness about this word range, but generally speaking, when a work falls a few thousand below 20,000 words, it's a novelette, and when it falls under 7,000 words, it's a short story. When it's 50,000 and climbing, it's a short novel, until it hits about 80,000 words, and then it's a standard novel.
^abc"Nebula Rules". Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Awards.Archived from the original on 1 July 2011. Retrieved20 January 2013.
^abc"Constitution"(PDF). World Science Fiction Society. 2009. pp. sec 3.3.2, 3.3.3. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 14 April 2012. Retrieved20 January 2013.
^abc"Award Rules". Shirley Jackson Awards. Archived fromthe original on 12 January 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.
^Smith, Jack (26 October 2018)."The novella: Stepping stone to success or waste of time?".The Writer.Archived from the original on 28 October 2020. Retrieved15 October 2020.A novella typically starts at about 20,000 words and tops out at 50,000, which is the minimum length for a short novel. There's no mathematical exactness about this word range, but generally speaking, when a work falls a few thousand below 20,000 words, it's a novelette, and when it falls under 7,000 words, it's a short story. When it's 50,000 and climbing, it's a short novel, until it hits about 80,000 words, and then it's a standard novel.
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