The Catcher in the Rye

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and... in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century. Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the way reality is created in the works of fiction, the fascination of the character study, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. The individualism of the presentation makes the personal memoir and the autobiography the two closest relatives among the genres of modern histories. The fictional narrative, the novel's distinct "literary" prose, specific media requirements , a characteristic subject matter that creates both intimacy and a typical epic depth can be seen as features that developed with the Western market of fiction.
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First-person narrative is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person... narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the writing. The narrators explicitly refer to themselves using words and phrases involving "I" and/or "we" . This allows the reader or audience to see the point of view only of the narrator, and no other characters. In some stories, first-person narrators may refer to information they have heard from the other characters, in order to try to deliver a larger point of view. Other stories may switch from one narrator to another, allowing the reader or audience to experience the thoughts and feelings of more than one character. First-person narratives can appear in several forms: interior monologue, as in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground; dramatic monologue, as in Albert Camus' The Fall; or explicitly, as in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the... protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important. The term was coined in 1819 by philologist Karl Morgenstern in his university lectures, and later famously reprised by Wilhelm Dilthey, who legitimized it in 1870 and popularized it in 1905. The genre is further characterized by a number of formal, topical, and thematic features. The term coming-of-age novel is sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman, but its use is usually wider and less technical. The birth of the Bildungsroman is normally dated to the publication of Goethe’s The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister in 1795–96. Although the Bildungsroman arose in Germany, it has had extensive influence first in Europe and later throughout the world. Thomas Carlyle translated Goethe’s novel into English, and after its publication in 1824, many British authors wrote novels inspired by it.
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