Epistolary novel

An epistolary novel is a collection of fictional letters in their presentation, - possibly held together by an editor voice - to condense novel's action. Are possible exchange of letters between various people such as the epistolary legacy of a single hero. Because of its immediacy of diary fiction novel of the epistolary novel is comparable.

History

The beginning of the genre can be determined only with difficulty. Editions of letters scholar came on with humanism, fictitious correspondence supplemented the repertoire in satirical and politically oriented collections. The correspondence between Abelard and Heloise involved in Jean de Meungs Roman de la Rose (1280 ) are the amorous variant a much longer history. Were famous in the 17th century in this field the Lettres Portugaises with imitations and extensions and answers. Boundaries between the fictional and the real cost of the collections of letters of Madame d' Aulnoy.

As the first large-scale with all Roman art gambling epistolary novel one is Aphra Behn's Love- can view Letters in between a Noble- Man and his Sister ( 1684/85/87 ) - the novel a desperate love between the heroine and her sister's husband. The initial mixture of letters, full of despair, longing and despair makes intrigues actions place; Letters will be launched and deprived plan fully prepared to manipulate; a significant voltage width of the emotions is savored before the heroes end up ruined.

Properties

Aphra Behn's novel with the merits of the genus were determined:

• Reality is asserted effectively with it - the editor presents letters that are to be passed between the parties to and fro in fact,
• The style is in the epistolary novel new freedom: here does not tell a novelist, from which you may require storytelling, write here people who had no idea that their letters would someday read publicly - desperate, scheming, in love, in part, in a break with all conventions literary art,
• Perspective and knowledge in the epistolary novel complex to handle: here does not write an author who knows what is happening already, here Write actors who do not know what the other players do, isolated from each other subjective, supposedly intimate without any overview of what is happening - a Publisher voice can deliver added track at any time.

The epistolary novel in the 18th century

The urgent to reform the morals Samuel Richardson's novels reactivated mid-18th century the genre. The novel of the defenseless supplied by their employer attacks on their virtue Pamela found in the collection of letters be suitable medium: the reader followed the course of things in common with the addressee of the letters to intervene without had to fear from letter to letter, that the heroine the reprehensible man succumbed now.

The novels of the second half of the 18th century opened the genre to the extent in which it allowed the intimate self-expression, the insight into the writing in the Confidential psychological depth winning self. The plot could be shifted with the letter novel inward. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774 ) used consistently the genre. First German epistolary novel was Sophie von La Roche's story of Miss Sternheim, which appeared in 1771.

The most famous French letter novels of the 18th century are Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (1721, German Persian Letters ), Jean -Jacques Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise (1761 ) Choderlos de Laclos and 'Les liaisons dangereuses ( 1782, German Dangerous Liaisons ). In the 19th century, took over subjective and intimate fictitious autobiographies terrain of ultimately living mainly on the interaction of the actors epistolary novel.

Contemporary special form

A special form of the epistolary novel is the email novel. As in the epistolary novel, the reader learns from the correspondence ( e-mail) of the characters, the story to be told. By the speed and the low pressures the form of electronic mail, the author is able to provide fast-paced and direct. An example in the German language is longing Internet by Gabriele Farke. 2006 saw Daniel Glattauer's novel Gut gegen Nordwind, which transmits the strict epistolary form on the e -mail form. It comes as its sequel All seven waves (2009), without explanation from: Mail following mail.

Examples

• Samuel Richardson: Clarissa (1748 )
• John Cleland: Fanny Hill ( 1749)
• Sophie von La Roche: History of Miss Sternheim (1771 )
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther ( 1774)
• Choderlos de Laclos: Dangerous Liaisons ( 1782 )
• Ludwig Tieck: William Lovell (1795 /96).
• Achim von Arnim: Hollin 's love life (1802 )
• Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897 )
• Elizabeth of Heyking: letters that did not reach him (1903 )
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal: The letters of returnees (1907 )
• Jean Webster Daddy Langbein (1912 )
• Heinrich Boll: The Legacy (1982 )
• Alice Walker: The Color Purple (1982 )
• Herbert Rosendorfer: letters of the Chinese Past ( 1983)
• Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987/1989)
• Feridun Zaimoglu: Love Male, scarlet (2000)
• Daniel Glattauer: Gut gegen Nordwind (2006)