Family saga
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The family saga is a genre of literature which chronicles the lives and doings of a family or a number of related or interconnected families over a period of time. In novels (or sometimes sequences of novels) with a serious intent, this is often a thematic device used to portray particular historical events, changes of social circumstances, or the ebb and flow of fortunes from a multiple of perspectives.
The typical family saga follows generations of a family through a period of history in a series of novels. A number of sub-genres of the form exist such as the AGA saga.
Successful writers of popular family sagas include Susan Howatch, R. F. Delderfield and Philippa Carr.
Examples of family sagas of literary note include:
- Dream of the Red Chamber- one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature, it chronicles the rise and decline of the Jia family
- The Sagas of Icelanders - The medieval Icelandic family sagas from whence the word 'saga' is derived
- Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
- Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann
- The Covenant - James A. Michener
- The Courtneys, The Courtneys of Africa, and The Ballantynes series of novels - Wilbur Smith
- Dune - Frank Herbert
- The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
- The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende
- Jalna books of Mazo de la Roche
- The Kent Family Chronicles and The Crown Family Saga - John Jakes
- The Immigrants by Howard Fast
- The Mallens by Catherine Cookson
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium by George Leonardos
- Roots - Alex Haley
- The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
- Holes, a novel by Louis Sachar
- The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo Renaissance-set novel series by Dorothy Dunnett.
- Fall on Your Knees -- Ann-Marie MacDonald
- The Pilot, The Exile, and the Journey--N.C. Carson
- Middlesex--Jeffrey Eugenides
- White Teeth - Zadie Smith
In cinema:
- The Best of Youth, La Meglio gioventù
- The Godfather
- While not regarded foremost as a family saga, the Star Wars film series by George Lucas amounts to a fantasy-based family saga revolving around three generations of the Skywalker family: Shmi Skywalker, her son Anakin and his twin offspring Luke and Leia. (In addition, subsequent generations of Skywalkers appear in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.) Anakin and Luke are the central figures of the series, which chronicles Anakin's rise from slavery to a powerful Jedi, then his fall from grace, his existence as Darth Vader and ultimately his redemption by Luke.
See also
