The Novella (Critical Survey of Long Fiction)
Introduction
The word “novella” comes from the Latin word novellus, a diminutive of the word novus, which means “new.” It first became associated with the telling of stories in the thirteenth century with collections of “new” versions of old saints’ tales, exempla, chivalric tales, and ribald stories. Eventually, the term became associated with tales that were fresh, strange, unusual—stories, in short, that were worth the telling.
Beginnings of the Novella
The most decisive historical event to establish the term “novella” as a...
[The entire page is 4975 words long]
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