Talk:Novel

We need someone who knows their ancient novels...

Like the subject says, we need someone who knows their ancient novels to contribute to this article! I was about to say that I haven't even read Doody's 'True Story of the Novel', but then it occurred to me that I haven't even read most of the important ancient novels! And this is all to say nothing of medieval novels (I guess I'm thinking mainly of the prose Lancelot) and other medieval prose, novel-like things. Or early non-Western novels! I will come back to this article in a few years when I have done my homework... Brian P. Long 17:07, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

Like I said above, my knowledge of Ancient novels is pretty shaky and I don't have the appropriate references to hand, so anyone who knows better than I is welcome to make corrections to the section I wrote. Thanks, Brian P. Long 19:04, 25 April 2008 (CDT)

Right: The Water Margin; The Dream of the Red Chamber; just don't somebody forget to do those.... Bruce M.Tindall 06:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It's all you, Bruce... Brian P. Long 14:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

By Anthony Burgess, on the novel

Full-text, open-access: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421071/novel Anthony.Sebastian 04:17, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is fairly useful for whoever takes this topic up again. Looking at the history, I seem to be the only person who has added anything substantial since 2008, but I am not going to do any more. As it is, I have had to take great care not to let too many of my prejudices show, and I doubt whether I could keep it up. I hope that someone else will pursue the subject in due course. Meanwhile I think the article is now reasonably informative, within very tight limits. --Martin Wyatt 18:44, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Martin, I shouldn't worry about incursion of your prejudices if you were to continue working on the article, as they would be re-edited by others, and, besides that, a discussion of the novel is bound to reflect the perspective of the writer. I find it impossible to leave my biases outside the door of my office when I set out to write a supposedly objective piece. Anthony.Sebastian 19:24, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Unless we decide to do something different with this topic, it will necessarily require a lengthy treatment. Does anybody have any ideas about how we can make this a portal article, a portal to many other articles on specific aspects of the novel? Anthony.Sebastian 19:24, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Portal article?

Having thought about this, I think that on the whole it would be better to have a portal article under the heading of "Fiction". If one of the functions of the portal is to offer a guide to subsidiary topics, then subjects such as "crime fiction" and "science fiction" are not confined to the novel, but also encompass the short story and comics. At the moment these topics are on the Related Topics sub-page for the novel anyway. What do other people think? --Martin Wyatt 19:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)