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Updated: July 16, 2025
But, on the other hand, it is novelistic in the emphasis it casts on individual personality, the intimacy with which it focuses the interest not so much upon a nation as upon a man. The epic, in the ancient sense, is dead to-day.
The French, who are more precise than we in their use of denotative terms, are accustomed to divide their novelistic fiction into what they call the roman, the nouvelle, and the conte.
Of late, an effort has been made to break down the barrier between the novel and the drama: many stories, which have been told first in the novelistic mood, have afterward been reconstructed and retold for presentation in the theater. This attempt has succeeded sometimes, but has more often failed.
It is somewhat simpler to trace a distinction both in content and in mood between novelistic and dramatic fiction, because the latter is produced under special conditions which impose definite limitations upon the author. A drama is, in essence, a story devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an audience.
=Novel, Novelette, and Short-Story.= Turning our attention from the epic and the drama, and confining it to the general type of fiction which in the last chapter was loosely named novelistic, we shall find it possible to distinguish somewhat sharply, on the basis of both material and method, between three several forms, the novel, the novelette, and the short-story.
It is a matter of expression merely, and must be decided in each case by the temperamental attitude of the author toward his subject-matter. Certain materials of fiction are inherently epic, or dramatic, or novelistic, as the case may be.
The dramatic author, since he plans his story for a heterogeneous multitude of people, must incorporate in the same single work of art elements that will interest all classes of mankind. But the novelistic author, since he is at liberty to pick his auditors at will, may, if he choose, write only for the best-developed minds.
Also, an author, according to his mental attitude toward life and toward the subject-matter of his fictions, may cast his stories either in the epic, the dramatic, or the novelistic mood. In order to understand this distinction, we must examine the nature of the epic and the drama, and then study the novel in comparison with these two elder types of fiction.
Dramatic fiction has the greater depth, and novelistic fiction has the greater breadth. The latter is more extensive, the former more intensive, in its artistry. This much, however, may be decided definitely.
Dramatic fiction has the greater depth, and novelistic fiction has the greater breadth. The latter is more extensive, the former more intensive, in its artistry. This much, however, may be decided definitely.
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