The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding

In some senses, I guess this book is out of date. Watt deals with the most influential early English novelists, while taking care to show that they probably weren't 'Novelists' as we think of them today. He's not interested in expanding the canon, or arguing that less influential writers are better than his chosen three (Defoe, Richardson and Fielding). He doesn't focus on gender, or race, or class. He doesn't try to uncover inconsistencies within the novels he writes about. There's no political puffery. And thanks to these facts, this book should stand as a gold standard of criticism. He presents arguments, which the reader can disagree with on rational grounds. By not *focussing* on identity politics, he can actually describe the ways that gender and class work within the novels in question, and how the functions of gender and class in the real world context inform the novels. This is not an attack on Fielding's sexism, or Richardson's prudery, or Defoe's avarice; it is an attempt to understand the authors' attitudes towards the relationships of men and women, and the relationships of economic individuals. Watt asks fundamental questions, and then tries to answer them, a refreshing approach 50 years after publication. Why did the novel arise when it did in England? He tends towards strictly sociological answers to these questions: the rise of individualism, capitalism and the middle classes explain the novel's prominence. But this does not keep him from asking more formal and literary questions. He gives arguments for *both* Defoe's relationship to individualist capitalism, *and* the form that his works take; both the context of Richardson's sexual politics and the literary reasons for his using the epistolary form; Fielding's 'conservatism' and the influence of neo-classicism on his novels. I disagree with many of Watt's conclusions, particularly with regard to Richardson's 'progressivism' and Fielding's 'conservatism.' Watt seems to rely too much on realism as a criterion for judging the success of the works in question, and this leads him to argue that Fielding's works are more class-bound than they are). The mark of this book's greatness is that despite fundamental disagreements, I'll be taking this book as a model for my own work in the future.

The Rise of the Novel takes us through a maze of questions as to how the English novel rose to prominence, and is so often taken for granted today by 21st century readers. The lone male protagonist of Robinson Crusoe is seen as rugged and able to harness his environment under harsh circumstances written by Daniel Defoe. In this book Robinson Crusoe is examined in detail as the precursor of the individualist in society in the novel as against the female protagonists examined, such as Moll Flanders and Pamela, who were born into poverty and are prey to unsuspecting male advances; men being their trusted "protectors," who disillusion these women's expectations as to whom to trust for their overall advancement in a male-dominated society that was going forward in the British industrial age.

Ian Watt's exhaustive scholarly work on the emergence of the novel has proven invaluable in identifying what were the factors that allowed the novel to take its place in the history of English literature. With particular reference to Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, Watt gives an in-depth exploration of the growth of the middle class, the increase of literary habits of the general population through the rise of the city, the availability of the printing press and an interest in the woes and triumphs of the plight of the woman in the late eighteenth century. Well worth the read for those in college literature classes.

Published in 1957, "The Rise of the Novel" was immediately recognized as a landmark of literary criticism. It has, justifiably, retained this status up to the present. Recognizing that life does not present itself in neat separate packages of literature, history, and sociology, "The Rise of the Novel" integrates Watt's considerable knowledge in each of these areas to assess the impact of three authors, Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, upon the development of the English novel in the eighteenth century. In the final chapter, he shows how their contributions were integrated and further developed in the works of Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen and others. Along the way, he makes numerous fascinating observations that I personally had not run across before. For example: * With the rise of the city (in this case, London) in the eighteenth century, and the resulting development of a more transient population, the model for the Family shifted from the patriarchal family (with a paterfamilias) to a conjugal model (i.e., a new family is born upon each new marriage). * During the century, there was considerable disapproval of the heroic epic (as exemplified by Homer) as a result of the manners and morals it exhibited, i.e., violence and cruelty. "Tom Jones," a comic epic, was critized at the time for glorifying these and other negative values. * The large number of "spinsters" during the century led to formal proposals for the passage of laws allowing bigamy. The book is remarkably fair and balanced in its assessment of Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, with Richardson coming off better than I had expected. It's not enough to make me want to read "Pamela" and "Clarissa," but I did come away with a heightened appreciation of Richardson's abilities as an observer of life and society. Watt's own life (1917 -1999) is interesting. He joined the British Army at the age of 22 and served with distinction in World War II as an army lieutenant in the infantry from 1939 to 1946. He was wounded in the battle for Singapore in January 1942 and listed as "missing, presumed killed in action." In fact, he was taken prisoner by the Japanese and remained a prisoner of war until 1945, working on the construction of a railway that crossed Thailand a feat that inspired the Pierre Boulle novel "Bridge Over the River Kwai" and the film version by David Lean. More than 12,000 prisoners died during the building of the railroad, most of them from disease, and Watt was critically ill from malnutrition for several years. He joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1964., and was chair of the English department from 1968 to 1971. In addition to "The Rise of the Novel," he is best known for his body of criticism of the works of Joseph Conrad.

What? No reviews of this classic? You cannot pretend to understand the novel in English if you've not read this.