On Epistolary Novel

In Western literature history,epistolary novel has three hundred years history from appearance to development. Although the origin of letter is very old,it didn't arise until 18th centry as a new literary genre,and made considerable progress in the West.Following the modern initiator of epistolary novels,Richardson's Pamela ,a group of writers produced the epistolary novels one after another by Richardson's impact,including Rousseau's Julie ou La Nouvelle Heloise and Goethe's Die Leiden Des Jungen Werthers.By these authors' efforts,epistolary novels were pushed to the peak.The narrative style and artistic form of letter fiction are original and unique,they went through a hundred year,but they were still popular,their old ar tistic forms were favoured by many literary masters.This paper will unearth its distinctive artistic vitality,in the meantime offer a new view for novel study .The paper divides four parts,i.e.preface,narrative type of epistolary novels,style characters of letter fiction and conclusion.The preface introduce general situation,emergence and development of letter fiction.The second part separates single-inner perspective,dual-inner perspective and multi-inner perspective.The last one relates the writers,kinds and influence of letter fiction.