Early novel, 1000-1600

It is difficult to give a full catalog of the genres that finally culminated - with the The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the 11th century, followed by the works of Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Niccolò Machiavelli and Miguel de Cervantes - in the original "novel", the production today generally categorized under the term "novella". (Genji is from Japan, whereas some of the other works come from Europe and nearby islands.)

The early novel was basically any story told for its spectacular or revealing incidents. The original environment - living on with the typical frame settings - was the entertaining conversation. Stories of grave incidents could just as well augment sermons. Collections of examples facilitated the work of preachers in need of such illustrations. A fable could illustrate a moral conclusion; a short historical reflection could do the same. A competition of genres developed. Tastes and social status were decisive, if one believes the medieval collections. The working classes loved their own brand of drastic stories: stories of clever cheating, wit and ridicule levelled against hated social groups (or competitors among the storytellers). Much of the original genre is still alive with the short joke told in everyday life to make a certain humorous point in a conversation.

Artistic performances included the story within a story: situations in which a series of stories was allegedly told. They rejoiced in a broad pattern of tastes and genres. The Canterbury Tales constitute a classic example, with their noble storytellers fond of "romantic" stories and their lower narrators preferring stories of everyday life. The genre did not have its own generic term. "Novel" would simply denote the novelty of the accident narrated. The inclusion of frame stories, however, brought an awareness of the fact that genres were developing in this field.

The main advantage of the background story was the justification it put into the hands of the actual authors such as Chaucer and Boccaccio. Romances afforded lofty language and relied on an accepted notion of what deserved to be read as high style. Yet what if the taste in moral teachings and poetry changed? Romances quickly became outdated. Stories of cheats and pranks, illicit love affairs, and clever intrigues in which certain respectable professions or the citizens of another town were made fun of were, on the other hand, neither morally nor poetically justifiable. They carried their justification outside. The storyteller would offer a few words explaining why he thought this story was worth telling. Again, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales afford the best examples: the real author could tell stories without any other justification than that this story gave a good portrait of the person who told it and of his or her taste, and that justification would remain stable throughout history.

If lofty performances grew tedious - as they did in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the old plots never leading to newer ones - the collections of tales or novels made it easy to criticise the lofty performances and to reduce their status: one of the group of narrators (created by the actual author) could start with the romantic story only to be interrupted by the other narrators listening within the story. They might silence him or order him to speak a language they liked, or they might ask him to speed up and to make his point. The result was a rise of the short genre. The steps of this development can be traced with the short story gaining in appreciation and value to rival romances in new versified collections at the end of the fourteenth century.

Nonetheless, by the early to mid sixteenth century, the novel was a popular enough form of literature for at least one newly discovered area - the land of California - to be named after a place in a novel, Las sergas de Esplandián.