novelist

Novelist ( Pl: novelists; fem: Romancière ) is the French word for a writer of fiction.

Conceptual history

The word is used in the German novelist with reduced significance. Until the 18th century, the name Romanist was the author of novels reserved - since the 19th century, then for the philologist with specialized focus Romance languages ​​.

Romance had a strong pejorative connotation for people who earned their money in the scandal business with texts, of which a good part invented, whereas other behavior could be true in a scandalous manner, and at any time retired in lawsuits against their style of writing it, but "only" a novel, to have written a free invention (see more detail on the development of the novel to the early 18th century novel).

Novelist came as a conceptual alternative in the exchange of demanding " literature " on who was in the second half of the 18th century, established within the belles lettres, to fiction ( this depth of Articles literature). The word is the bearing in the German hardly used for authors who wrote novels before the 19th century. For them to use the more neutral term in the literature novelist. However, a novelist is understood historically determined the preferred word for a writer who by applicable him meetings is currently in the feuilleton, which enters into exchange on his novels with the public and it uses the novel as a ( preferred ) medium of communication. Often the word is in sentences in which a production range is presented: " The essayist and novelist ... "

The word is used less frequently for writers of experimental fiction and not at all for a young author who hardly can claim to be above the medium of the novel in an established exchange with the public. Equally rare use is made ​​of it, so far as this is not the subject of wide discussion for authors of literary fiction.