What exactly do we mean by "a novel"?

What are we implying when we use the phrase "graphic novel"?

In this paper, I examine the historical and critical meanings of the word "novel," and the ways in which these meanings become complicated when we use them to talk about long-form works in comics.

I begin by examining the historical and critical meanings of the word "novel," and its checkered and often-changing past, in that word's traditional sense of describing long-form prose fiction.

I consider both the instabilities and the constants of the concept of the "novel," using both historical and ahistorical/analytical approaches -- exemplified by two classic studies of the form, Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel and E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel.

I then turn to exploring the ways in which this definition's complicated xpectations are and are not met by the various kinds of comics works which we currently call "graphic novels."

This entails consideration of a broad spectrum of the kinds of comics work currently published in book form, and the interrogation of such issues as seriality, the nature of super-hero worlds which extend conceptually beyond the boundaries of a given text, and common non-novelistic comics forms such as the original anthology.

I also touch on some common aspects of comics storytelling which differ from more historically traditional conventions of the novel, including issues of privileging or backgrounding character evolution, "world-building," and fantastic as opposed to realistic narrative modes.