Early novels

In the Restoration period the main form of literature was drama, but at the beginning of the XVIIIth century a new form of literature started to rise: the novel. Early novels dealt with different subjects, and although literature was intended to please and instruct, the main aim of the literature of the beginning of the XVIIIth was to please. The characters that appear in the early novels are type or flat characters, characters that are familiar to everyone and that are engaged in different situations which are created, as I said before, to please.

I think that one of the most important things that novel changed was the point of view. In comedies, the characters are somehow responsible of their opinions; we can find many different ways of thinking that are attached to a character. In the novel, the point of view of the narrator is imposed and, although the characters “speak for themselves,” the reader is conditioned by the way the narrator tells the story. This made difficult for the readers of the period to differentiate between the writer and the narrator itself. Luckily, now we know what fiction is, and this is an important thing if we want to read a fiction story, although we are still conditioned by the writer: if we don not like him/her, probably we will not read his/her book.