27-584: Doctor Glas is a 1905 epistolary novel by Hjalmar Söderberg which tells the story of a physician in 19th-century Sweden who deals with moral and love issues. The novel is about Dr. Tyko Gabriel Glas who is a respected physician in Stockholm. The story is told in the form of a diary and follows Doctor Glas as he struggles with depression. The antagonist is Reverend Gregorius , a morally corrupt clergyman. Gregorius' beautiful young wife confides in Dr. Glas that her sex life
54-517: A Portuguese Nun ( Lettres portugaises ) (1669) generally attributed to Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues , though a small minority still regard Marianna Alcoforado as the author, is claimed to be intended to be part of a miscellany of Guilleragues prose and poetry. The founder of the epistolary novel in English is said by many to be James Howell (1594–1666) with "Familiar Letters" (1645–50), who writes of prison, foreign adventure, and
81-401: A convent correspond over a 17-year period, exchanging letters describing their lives. Mary Shelley employs the epistolary form in her novel Frankenstein (1818). Shelley uses the letters as one of a variety of framing devices, as the story is presented through the letters of a sea captain and scientific explorer attempting to reach the north pole who encounters Victor Frankenstein and records
108-511: A letter (see epistle ) . This type of fiction is also sometimes known by the German term Briefroman or more generally as epistolary fiction . The epistolary form can be seen as adding greater realism to a story, due to the text existing diegetically within the lives of the characters. It is in particular able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator . An important strategic device in
135-667: A pen and scribbling her diary entries under the most dramatic and unlikely of circumstances. Oliver Goldsmith used the form to satirical effect in The Citizen of the World , subtitled "Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London to his Friends in the East" (1760–61). So did the diarist Fanny Burney in a successful comic first novel, Evelina (1788). The epistolary novel slowly became less popular after 18th century. Although Jane Austen tried
162-455: A polyphonic one. The epistolary novel form has continued to be used after the eighteenth century. Edm%C3%A9 Boursault Edmé Boursault (October 1638 – 15 September 1701) was a French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, born at Mussy l'Evéque, now Mussy-sur-Seine ( Aube ). On Boursault's first arrival in Paris in 1651 his language was limited to Burgundian , but within
189-698: A real detective for whom Doyle only acted as a literary agent . Epistolary novels can be categorized based on the number of people whose letters are included. This gives three types of epistolary novels: monophonic (giving the letters of only one character, like Letters of a Portuguese Nun and The Sorrows of Young Werther ), dialogic (giving the letters of two characters, like Mme Marie Jeanne Riccoboni 's Letters of Fanni Butler (1757), and polyphonic (with three or more letter-writing characters, such as in Bram Stoker's Dracula ). A crucial element in polyphonic epistolary novels like Clarissa and Dangerous Liaisons
216-781: A year he had produced his first comedy, Le Mort vivant (Living Death). This and some other pieces of small merit secured for him distinguished patronage in the society ridiculed by Molière in the Ecole des femmes . Boursault was persuaded that the Lysidas of that play was a caricature of himself, and attacked Molière in Le Portrait du peintre ou la contre-critique de l'Ecole des femmes (1663). Molière retaliated in L'Impromptu de Versailles , and Boileau attacked Boursault in Satires 7 and 9. Boursault replied to Boileau in his Satire des satires (1669), but
243-525: Is making her miserable and asks for his help. Glas falls in love with her and agrees to help even though she already has another lover. He attempts to intervene, but the Reverend refuses to give up his "marital rights" – she must have sex with him whether she likes it or not. So, in order to make his love happy, he begins to plot her husband's murder. The novel also deals with issues such as abortion, women's rights, suicide, euthanasia, and eugenics. Not surprisingly,
270-441: Is the dramatic device of 'discrepant awareness': the simultaneous but separate correspondences of the heroines and the villains creating dramatic tension. They can also be classified according to their type and quantity of use of non-letter documents, though this has obvious correlations with the number of voices – for example, newspaper clippings are unlikely to feature heavily in a monophonic epistolary and considerably more likely in
297-411: The 1900s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Epistolary novel An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters between the fictional characters of a narrative. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with
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#1732883597389324-458: The book triggered a violent campaign against its author who was subsequently vilified in Swedish literary circles. This article about an epistolary novel or fictional diary of the 1900s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . This article about a romance novel of
351-402: The court that its author was about to be made assistant tutor to Louis, Grand Dauphin when it was found that he was ignorant of Greek and Latin . The post then went to Pierre Huet , but perhaps in compensation, Boursault was made collector of taxes at Montluçon about 1672, an appointment that he retained until 1688. Among his best-known plays are Le Mercure galant , the title of which
378-429: The dying man's narrative and confessions. Published in 1848, Anne Brontë 's novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is framed as a retrospective letter from one of the main heroes to his friend and brother-in-law with the diary of the eponymous tenant inside it. In the late 19th century, Bram Stoker released one of the most widely recognized and successful novels in the epistolary form to date, Dracula . Printed in 1897,
405-404: The epistolary form to great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related directly or explicitly. In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 's The Sorrows of Young Werther ( Die Leiden des jungen Werther ) (1774) and Friedrich Hölderlin 's Hyperion . The first Canadian novel, The History of Emily Montague (1769) by Frances Brooke , and twenty years later
432-614: The epistolary in juvenile writings and her novella Lady Susan (1794), she abandoned this structure for her later work. It is thought that her lost novel First Impressions , which was redrafted to become Pride and Prejudice , may have been epistolary: Pride and Prejudice contains an unusual number of letters quoted in full and some play a critical role in the plot. The epistolary form nonetheless saw continued use, surviving in exceptions or in fragments in nineteenth-century novels. In Honoré de Balzac 's novel Letters of Two Brides , two women who became friends during their education at
459-464: The epistolary novel for creating the impression of authenticity of the letters is the fictional editor. There are two theories on the genesis of the epistolary novel: The first claims that the genre is originated from novels with inserted letters, in which the portion containing the third-person narrative in between the letters was gradually reduced. The other theory claims that the epistolary novel arose from miscellanies of letters and poetry: some of
486-409: The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy (1789) by William Hill Brown , were both written in epistolary form. Starting in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of savage burlesques . The most notable example of these was Henry Fielding 's Shamela (1741), written as a parody of Pamela . In it, the female narrator can be found wielding
513-413: The individual characters, and the central voice of the author and moral evaluation disappeared (at least in the first volume; further volumes introduced a narrator). The author furthermore explored a realm of intrigue with complex scenarios such as letters that fall into the wrong hands, faked letters, or letters withheld by protagonists. The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in
540-468: The letters were tied together into a (mostly amorous) plot. There is evidence to support both claims. The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish "Prison of Love" ( Cárcel de amor ) ( c. 1485 ) by Diego de San Pedro , belongs to a tradition of novels in which a large number of inserted letters already dominated the narrative. Other well-known examples of early epistolary novels are closely related to
567-455: The letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered to include novels composed of documents even if they do not include letters at all. More recently, epistolaries may include electronic documents such as recordings and radio, blog posts, and e-mails . The word epistolary is derived from Latin from the Greek word epistolē ( ἐπιστολή ), meaning
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#1732883597389594-425: The love of women. Perhaps first work to fully utilize the potential of an epistolary novel was Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister . This work was published anonymously in three volumes (1684, 1685, and 1687), and has been attributed to Aphra Behn though its authorship remains disputed in the 21st century. The novel shows the genre's results of changing perspectives: individual points were presented by
621-462: The novel is compiled entirely of letters, diary entries, newspaper clippings, telegrams, doctor's notes, ship's logs, and the like. The biographic stylings of the Sherlock Holmes adventures by Arthur Conan Doyle have lead to the tradition of a " Sherlockian game " among the Sherlock Holmes fandom , where fans discuss the supposed writings of Dr. Watson as though they were a genuine account of
648-453: The tradition of letter-books and miscellanies of letters. Within the successive editions of Edmé Boursault 's Letters of Respect, Gratitude and Love ( Lettres de respect, d'obligation et d'amour ) (1669), a group of letters written to a girl named Babet were expanded and became more and more distinct from the other letters, until it formed a small epistolary novel entitled Letters to Babet ( Lettres à Babet ). The immensely famous Letters of
675-496: The works of such authors as Samuel Richardson , with his immensely successful novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1749). John Cleland 's early erotic novel Fanny Hill (1748) is written as a series of letters from the titular character to an unnamed recipient. In France, there was Lettres persanes (1721) by Montesquieu , followed by Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau , and Choderlos de Laclos ' Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), which used
702-530: Was afterwards reconciled to him, when Boileau on his side erased his name from his satires. Boursault obtained a considerable pension as editor of a rhyming gazette, which was, however, suppressed for ridiculing a Capuchin friar , and the editor was only saved from the Bastille by the interposition of Condé . In 1671 he produced a work of edification in Ad usum Delphini : la veritable étude des souverains , which so pleased
729-429: Was changed to La Comédie sans titre ("Play without a title", 1683) when the publisher of a literary review of the same name objected (see " Mercure de France "); La Princesse de Clêves (1676), an unsuccessful play which, when refurbished with fresh names by its author, succeeded as Germanicus ; Esope à la ville (1690); and Esope à la cour (1701). His lack of dramatic instinct could hardly be better indicated than by
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