The Rise of “the Novel”: Naming (and Disciplining) New Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Not only did the eighteenth century see the rise of what we now call “the novel”, it also saw the rise of a category to define it. This process was a relatively long one, the term “novel” entering into common usage only towards the end of the century. A variety of other experimental labels, such as “history” and “biography”, were used to stress the empirical component of the new species of writing, which was also defined by means of preexisting genre notions such as “epic” and “romance”.