roman-fleuve

A novel sequence is a set or series of novels which share common themes, characters, or settings, but where each novel has its own title and free-standing storyline, and can thus be read independently or out of sequence.

Definitions

There is no useful, formal demarcation between novel sequences and multi-part novels. Novels that are related may or may not fall into a clear sequence. It is also debatable whether a trilogy is long enough and whether its parts are discrete enough to qualify as a novel sequence.

For example the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope are only loosely related, although they contain a recurring cast of characters; his political novels about the Pallisers have a tighter connection and dynamic. A strict definition might exclude both.

History

The novel sequence was a product of the nineteenth century, with James Fenimore Cooper's works appearing in the 1820s, and Anthony Trollope's Barchester books in the 1850s. In French literature, Honoré de Balzac's ambitious La Comédie humaine, a set of nearly 100 novels and plays with some recurring characters, started to come together during the 1830s. Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle is a family saga, a format that later became a popular fictional form, going beyond the conventional three-volume novel.

The roman-fleuve (French, literally "river-novel") refers to an extended sequence of novels of which the whole acts as a commentary for a society or an epoch, and which continually deals with a central character, community or a saga within a family. The river metaphor implies a steady, broad dynamic lending itself to a perspective. Each volume makes up a complete novel by itself, but the entire cycle exhibits unifying characteristics.

Proust

In the twentieth century Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu came to be regarded by many as a definitive roman fleuve. Today, however, its seven volumes are generally considered to be a single novel [1]. In some serious sense, it escapes classification.

Proust's work was immensely influential, particularly on British novelists of the middle of the twentieth century who did not favour modernism. Some of those follow the example of Anthony Powell^[1], a Proust disciple, but consciously adapting the technique to depict social change, rather than change in high society. This was a step beyond the realist novels of Arnold Bennett (the Clayhanger books) or John Galsworthy.

Contemporary pressures and novel sequences

A novel sequence usually contains story arcs or themes that cross over several books, rather than simply sharing one or more characters. Sequences of genre fiction are not generally considered romans-fleuve; the Aubrey–Maturin series of Patrick O'Brian might qualify, and possibly the Vorkosigan Series of Lois McMaster Bujold.

Novel sequences, though, are now most common in genre fiction, particularly in science fiction and epic fantasy. The introduction of the preconstructed novel sequence is often attributed to E. E. Doc Smith, with his Lensman books. Such sequences, from contemporary authors, tend to be more clearly defined than earlier examples. Authors are now more likely to announce an overall series title, or write in round numbers such as 12 volumes. These characteristics are not those of the classical model forms, and become more like the 'franchises' of the film industry.

The types instead begin to fill out a concentric model like

trilogy < sequence < 'saga' grouping (single author) < shared universe < genre.

Examples

• Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series was first a series of magazine stories; then a book publication as edited into a trilogy; and then, by the later addition of volumes, a longer sequence that made contact with his Robot Series books. Finally other authors have added books.
• Jonathan Bayliss's Gloucesterman series was initially conceived as a trilogy comprising Gloucesterbook, Gloucestertide, and the projected Gloucestermas. When Bayliss's decades-in-the-works Prologos was published in 1999, it shared enough characters and themes in common with the Gloucester novels that the Gloucesterman series is now considered a tetralogy, with Prologos the introductory volume to the original trilogy.
• David Brin's Uplift series is a set of two trilogies, not (initially) sharing characters.
• John le Carré's numerous books featuring George Smiley are more novelistic in their technique than most genre fiction, but the organisation is too lax to consider them a sequence, in intent or execution.
• James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales
• Benito Pérez Galdós's Episodios nacionales
• Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe,
• the novels of Jules Romains
• John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga
• Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage
• Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time
• C. P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers
• Henry Williamson's Chronicles of Ancient Sunlight
• Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion and The First Born of Egypt
• Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and other sequences
• Paul Scott's Raj Quartet
• Susan Howatch's Starbridge sequence
• the novels of Amanda Craig
• A. N. Wilson's Lampitt Papers
• Ferdinand Mount's Chronicles of Modern Twilight
• John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom books.
• Roger Martin du Gard's Les Thibault
• Georges Duhamel's Chronique des Pasquier
• Louis Aragon's Cycle du Monde Réel
• Jacques Chardonne's Les Destinées sentimentales
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels
• Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series
• Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels
• Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire
• Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series
• James Patterson's Alex Cross series
• Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series
• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Footnotes

1. ^ Powell was an anti-modernist modernist, according to Christopher Hitchens; see Unacknowledged Legislation (2000) p. 197, Powell's Way, first published in the New York Review of Books 28 May 1998.