At the end of the 17th century, beginning of the 18th, a new way to tell story was born in England. Thanks to the economical and cultural improvements following the new trades routes and the first phase of the industrial revolution, the English middle classes could explain and show their political and economical weight with the novel (= romanzo)
The novel is a fictional (imaginary = inventata) prose in which characters are the people you can meet everyday during your daily routine and the places are the towns and the villages you know, visit, live in.
This was the main difference between romance and novel: the romance – the stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, for example- were about magicians, kings, queens and the settings were sometimes imaginary or legendary; the novel is a story of every day life about every day people who work, love and travel.
The word derived from the latin word Novus because an author who decided to speak about common and familiar subjects was a real novelty for the period.
The genre in Italian we call novella in English is short story.