Notes

Watt opens the book with a peculiar question: Is the novel a new literary form? This is very relevant from the
perspective of new media. Watt specifically examines Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. (p. 9) The new feature of
the novel is realism, which stems from French realists (Flaubert). Realism is the antonym of idealism. The
novels realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents, but in the way it presents it. Correspondence of
work with world it imitates, this is an epistemological problem. (p. 11) The novel rejects universals, and focuses
on the particular. This is especially of use in distinguishing it from epic or mythic works (NOTE: many games and
genre novels do rely on universals, there is a point of conflict here.) The novel is also unusual in fidelity of
representing human experience. (p. 12) During the time of the novels rise, there is was a growing tendency for
individual experience to trump collective tradition. (p. 14) Identity exists through time and contains past thought
and action. Past experience cages present action. (p. 22) Time is seen in novels as a variable, flexible,
interruptible unit. (p. 26) This collection of changes stems from a great deal of social and philosophical changes,
and the rise of the novel could be seen as merely a reflection of these changes. (Much like new media relates to
social and technological changes)

Novels, leisure time, and sex. Reading was seen primarily as a feminine pursuit, but this was generally restricted
to upper classes. Gradually, the working class became more able to afford books (in terms of literacy, leisure
time, and available income). Women generally had more leisure time, even among lower classes and incomes, so
they tended to be major purchasers of books. (p. 43) The changing base of readers changed the desires of
general readership. Reading seems to begin as a religious activity, and then passes to secular interests. (p. 50)
There was some looking down on novels and their writers as having no talent (or genius) that the writers were
only out to get money. New novels grew while unaware of literary tradition. (p. 58)

On Pamela, Early narrative focuses on idealization of love, so story is about knights adventure rather than
actual relationship. With realism and mass interest, a broader spectrum emerges, shifting focus to human
relationships themselves. (p. 136) There is a complex interplay between individualism and capitalism and
marriage. Social conditions deny women individualism and economic power. Marriage becomes expensive as it
turns women into trade goods. Marriage was seen as a market and its expensive nature led to many extra-
marital relationships. (p. 143) Emphasis in narrative changes to domestic setting, variation in extended roles and
relationships between social classes. (p. 154) Pamela concludes with traditional marriage and middle class sexual
ethics. The puritan ritual bridges the ideal and real, sine the relationship is idealized within the realistic setting.
Pamela does not wholly embrace the real, but presents a confused struggle between the ideal and real. (p. 167)

Sentimentalism arises in novel form: Novels do make people cry. This is not because of realness of character, but
because of private experience (p. 175) Around the rise of the novel, private space became more commonplace
(whereas life used to be much less private in previous eras). Spaces and means of interaction changed. Privacy
afforded by suburbia (in terms of areas outside of the city) and letter writing. Privacy, especially a room of ones
own (Woolf) was requirement for womens emancipation. (p. 188) The novel enables the representation of
private affairs that were impossible to discuss openly. Provides an intimate account with characters, and brings
the reader into the deepest private concerns. (p. 199) The paradox of private life and the novel: the process of
urbanization lead to a way of life more secluded and less social than before, but enables a literary form that was
more concerned with private life than ever possible. What are paradoxes of other media and social experience?
(p. 206)

According to Watt, Clarissa reflects the maturity of the medium of the Novel. Why? Complication of simple matter
and expansion of characters. The implausible and didactic aspects of plot are brought into larger dramatic pattern
and form of complexity. It is this capacity for a continuous enrichment and complication of a simple situation
which makes Richardson the great novelist that he is; and it shows, too, that the novel had at last attained
literary maturity, with formal resources capable not only of supporting the tremendous imaginative expansion
which Richardson gave his theme, but also leading him away from the flat didacticism of his critical
preconceptions into so profound a penetration of his characters that their experience partakes of the terrifying
ambiguity of human life itself. (p. 238)

Fielding borrows from epic form. References, but does not actually employ it. Does not use form, but evokes it,
alludes to high standards. Part of evoking nostalgia from other great works. (Maybe ref Jane Austen Book Club?)
(p. 259)

In later tradition of novels: Psychological distance and authenticity. Austen uses this and juxtaposition. Austen is
the successful solution to Richardson and Fielding. Jane Austens novels, in short, must be seen as the most
successful solutions of the two general narrative problems for which Richardson and Fielding had provided only
partial answers. She was able to combine into a harmonious unity the advantages of both realism of presentation
and realism of assessment, of the internal and the external approaches to character; her novels have authenticity
without diffuseness or trickery, wisdom of social comment without a garrulous essayist, and a sense of the social
order which is not achieved at the expense of the individuality and autonomy of the characters. (p. 297)
Ian Watt The Rise of the Novel (1956): "Realism and The Novel
Form"
September 16, 2010 at 12:58pm
Very Short Summary:

- Novel seems as a new literary form. Defoe Richardson and Fielding. Since the 18th century the characteristics of the
novel was not fully established. They consider realism in novel apart from all others genres. Realism portrays all the
varieties of human experiences. This is the difference of it from idealism.
- Life and reality are very close each others in the novels: veri similitude.
- The impression of the fidelity to human experience. The realist novels should be very close to real experiences.
- Individual experiences is the unique property of the realist novels: rejection of universals over particular, because
the plots are different from the traditional ones. How individual sees in the individual is important in this genre.
- Individualism of the characters and detailed presentation of their environment makes the book novel.
- The names of the characters are also important: should be realist. Autobiographical information is also important in
realist novels. Ordinary contemporary names.
- Characteristics of the novel: time and place are important. The development of the characters in time period.
Retrospective: panoramic view.
- Daniel Defoe: individual life is important in its larger perspective in its closer view.
- Space = place.
- Topographical novel: should be describing extent space.

nadide gray
..............

makalenin netteki zeti:

Watts seminal The Rise of the Novel represents perhaps the crucial attempt in the twentieth century to understand both
the emergence and the rise to dominance of the novel as a genre as well as of realism as the literary mode of choice in
the nineteenth century and, indeed, almost ever since. The novel, he argues, was a creature of the time and the place:
Western Europe at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. He points out that the issue
which the novel raises more sharply than other forms is the problem of the nature of the correspondence between words
and reality (12)
and, by extension, the problem of the correspondence between the literary work and the reality which it imitates (11).
The nature of the realism of the novel is best clarified, he contends, by the help of those professionally concerned with
the analysis of concepts, philosophers (11).
Since at least Aristotle, it was widely argued that it is universals, classes or abstractions, and not the particular, concrete
objects of sense-perception, which are the true realities (11). There dominated a strong tendency towards the
generalising and the universal, rather than the particular and the individual. Hence, the views of theorists such as Pope
and Johnson on the proper subject matter of poetry which we discussed earlier. Modern realism, however, begins from
the proposition that the truth can be discovered by the individual through the senses (12). Its general temper is critical,
anti-traditional and innovating (12). The great contribution of Descartes in particular (whom we will discuss in the next
module) was his concept of the pursuit of truth as a wholly individual matter, logically independent of the tradition of
past thought (130).

The novel is the literary form, Watt argues, which most fully reflects this individualist and
innovating reorientation (13). The novel rejects traditional formal conventions (13) in general and traditional plots
(13) in particular. Writers from Chaucer to Milton accepted the general premise of their times that, since Nature is
essentially complete and unchanging, its records, whether scriptural, legendary or historical, constitute a definitive
repertoire of human experiece (14). Hence, the use of timeless stories to mirror the unchanging moral verities (22).
From about the Renaissance, however, there was a growing tendency for individual experience to replace collective
tradition as the ultimate arbiter of reality (14). This is reflected in the work of novelists like Defoe who totally
subordinates the plot of Robinson Crusoe to the pattern of autobiographical memoir (15) in the first defiant . . .
assertion of the primacy of individual experience in the novel (15).
Changes in plot were accompanied by changes in characterisation: the plot had to be acted out by particular people in
particular circumstances, rather than, as had been common in the past, by general human types against a background
determined by the appropriate literary convention (15). This is a literary change analogous to the philosophical turn from
universals to particulars. This was also the result, Watt points out, of the application to literary problems of the
psychological approach of Hobbes and Locke (16). One of the hallmarks of the novel is particularity of description (17)
or realistic particularity (17) especially concerning the presentation of character and background. The novel is
distinguished from other forms of fiction by the amount of attention it habitually accords both to the individualisation of
its characters and to the detailed presentation of their environment (18).
The particularising approach to character (18) essentially boils down to the problem of defining the individual person
(18), an issue which Locke had placed on the front burner of philosophical speculation ever since the publication of the
Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690. Given that the problem of personal identity is closely related to the
epistemological status of proper names (18) in that names are the verbal expression of the particular identity
(18), naming became a crucial element in the individualisation of character in the novel. Traditionally characters were
named in such a way that they recalled a set of expectations formed from past literature, rather than from . . .
contemporary life (18-19). The first novelists broke with tradition by naming their characters in such a way as to suggest
that they were completely individualised entities (18).
Another development in characterisation in the novel is related to Lockes argument that identity is not a given but
something established through the use of memory: the individual establishes, Locke argues, an identity of consciousness
over time, getting in touch with his own continuing identity through memory of his past thoughts and actions (21), as
Watt puts it. The hallmark of the novel is the fact that, as Watt points out, the main subject is the exploration of the
personality as it is defined in the interpenetration of its past and present self-awareness (21). The main principle of
individuation, according to Locke, is the individuals existence at a particular locus in space and time (21).

Characters in the novel can only be individualised if they are set in a background of particularised time and place (21).
Because the universe is not unchanging, time is the shaping force of mans individual and collective history (22). The
plot of the novel is distinguished by the fact that it uses past experience as the cause of present action: a causal
connection operating through time replaces the reliance of earlier narratives on disguises and coincidences (22). The
novel, not least the stream of consciousness novel, has interested itself more than any other literary form in the
development of its characters in the course of time (22). The novel presents the individual life as a historical process . . .
being acted out against the background of the most ephemeral thoughts and action (24). Space is the necessary
correlative of time (the word present, for example, indicates both simultaneously). In traditional literary works, place is
vague and generalised as a result of which Shakespeares Rome is as much his contemporary England as is his Venice.
The novels solidity of setting (26) and vividness of detail functioned to put man wholly into his physical setting (27).

In short, the novel aims to provide what purports to be an authentic account of the actual
experiences of individuals (27). Another key device in this respect is diction. Traditionally, or at least prior to Bacon and
Locke, less attention was paid to the correspondence of words to things (28) than to the beauties which could be
bestowed upon description and action by the use of rhetoric (28). It was precisely such embellishment and adornment
which theorists from Bacon to Jonson to Wordsworth feared. The novel substituted for this emphasis on style and
eloquence a descriptive and denotative use of language (29) which views the language as a purely referential medium
(28). The goal of the novel is to achieve the immediacy and closeness of the text to what is being described (29) in an
effort on the part of the novelist to make the words bring his object home to us in all its concrete particularity (29). This
is, again, a very Lockean view of language, the purpose of which is to convey a knowledge of things. From this point of
view, the novel functions as a transcription of real life (30) (what the great French novelist Flaubert would term le rel
crit), operating by exhaustive presentation (30), rather than the elegant presentation (30) of yore. The
innovativeness of the novel, in short, reflects the philosophical shift and the change in world view which has replaced the
unified world picture of the Middle Ages with another very different one--one which presents us . . . with a developing but
unplanned aggregate of particular individuals having particular experiences at particular times and at particular places.
(31)

The novels imitation of human life follows the procedures adopted by philosophical realism in its attempt to ascertain
and report the truth (31). Realism in general and the novel in particular is based on the following premise, or primary
convention (32): that the novel is a full and authentic report of human experience, and is therefore under an obligation to
satisfy its reader with such details of the story as the individuality of the actors concerned, the particulars of the time and
places of their actions, details which are presented through a more referential use of language than is common in other
literary forms. (32) What should not be forgotten is, firstly, that the novel is not life but an artistic imitation of life;
secondly, that the novel form is a culturally and historically specific literary convention to which we have become
immured to the point where readers are resistant to reading other forms of literature as well as other kinds of prose (e.g.
experimental novels of a James Joyce or a Erna Brodber) merely because they are they are unable to relate to them.

Notes on Ian Watt's THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

1: Realism and the Novel Form

The novel arises in the 18th c. because of favourable social conditions. it's a new literary genre; we must define its characteristics.

Realism. This term has come to mean "fiction that portrays low life" (from Flaubert). But the novel's realism doesn't reside in the kind of life it presents,
but in the way it presents ita scientific scrutiny of life. Epistemological value: in the 18th ce. universals have been rejected; truth comes through the
senses (Locke, Descartes). But the method is more important: for the realists, the individual investigator studies the particulars of experience.
Importance is given to the relation between words and reality. Descartes followed an individualist method. For the novel, individual experience is
always unique, new. It can't be analyzed by referring it to the accepted models. Traditional plots are rejected for the first time (Shakespeare, Milton,
the Greeks, the Romansall considered human life basically unchangeable adn complete). Plot, character and morals are still not perfectly
interpenetrated in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Tradicional characters (universals) are also rejected (cf. Berkeley: "everything that exists is
particular"). Shaftesbury still rejects particularity and the taste of the peculiar. But in Defoe and Richardson we find a particularity of descriptions of
characters and environmnet. Individual identity is a matter of controversy to the philosophers of this time. Characters are given particular names and
surnames, not generic or descriptive names. (Nevertheless, Richardson's and Fielding's characters still preserve msome of that tradition. But that is a
secondary function already. In Amelia names are natural, assigned in a random manner.

Locke and Hume analyze personal identity, and identify it with the identity of consciousness through duration. Both ideas and characters become
general by separating them from their particular circumstances of time and place.The novel uses stories set in time: past experience is the cause of
present action; time scale is more minutely discriminated. Realism is associated to the slowness of virtual time (stream of consciousness carries it to
an extreme). Also, a respect arises for a coherent time-scheme which didn't exist in the classics. Defoe's plots are rooted in time; in Richardson we
find a date at the heading of each letter. Fielding mocks Richardson's exactitude, but uses a time-coherent scheme: the Jacobite rebellion in 1745 and
the phases of the moon in Tom Jones, etc. Time and space are inseparable. Defoe is the first writer to use a definite space and objects. In Richardson
provides description of interiors: settings are, like in Balzac, a pervasive force. Fielding is more conventional, but gives an exact topography. Prose
must be adapted to give an air of authenticity. Up to them, rhetoric ws used to embellish in an artificial way. Locke attacks the deceitfulness of rhetoric.
Defoe and Richardson are often clumsy, because they want to be real. Fielding is more orthodox and polished But his stylistic virtues bring a
selectiveness of vision which is far from the uncompromising application of the realist point of view in Richardson and Defoe. Like La Fayette and
Laclos, he is too stylized to be authentic. The novel works more by exhaustive presentation than by selectionmore so than other genres. It is also
more translatable.

The formal realism of the novel is, too, a convention, but it allows a more immediate imitation of actual experience than other literary forms. It makes
less demands on the audience. Predecessors of the novel: Homer, Chaucer, Apuleius's The Golden Ass, Aucassin et Nicolette... But this aesthetic
had never been followed systematically.

2: The Reading Public and The Rise of the Novel

There is a gradual extension of the reading class. About 80,000 in the 1690s unreliable figures perhaps? But it's still a progress. There was a very
limited distribution of literacy. School for the lower classes was intermittent and limited. It was not a necessity to learn. Books were very expensive:
circulating libraries appear. The middle class grows, and there are more and more women readers. They read mostly religious works: readers of fiction
are a different group. Readers of periodicals, tooa miscellaneous taste, a mixture of improvement and entertainment. Booksellers achieve a strong
financial standing, and can influence authors, who are their employees. Richardson was commissioned by them; Johnson was promoted by them. The
commercial laws favour prose and copiousness rather than verse: this helps the novel. Writers are independent and not oriented to the Court as in
France: there is a lesser force of tradition.

3: Robinson Crusoe. Individualism and the Novel

The novel's concern for the individual depends on

- the society's hight valuation of the individual
- variety of belief and action among ordinary people, to make them interesting.
In modern society there is a value of the individual apart from society or tradition. Two historical causes: the rise of modern capitalism, and the spread
of Protestantism.

Capitalism. Capitalism is linked to economic specialization, and to more democracy; it promotes freedom of choice. Social arrangements typical of
capitalism are individual, not collective (as they were in the family, the guild, the church...). There is a slow rise of capitalism from the 16th to the 19th
century. Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, etc. defend the traditional order. Now, the contrary is the case. Hobbes stresses individualism. Locke speaks
of the rights of the individual. Defoe is in this line of thought; there is a link between individualism and the rise of the novel. Robinson is homo
oeconomicus. All of Defoe's heroes pursue money, according to a profit-and-loss bookkeeping technique. They enter continuous contractual
relationships. Traditional relationships (family, town, nation...) appear weakened. Defoe's heroes have no family, or leave them to better their situation.
The argument between his parents and Crusoe is not one of filial duty or religion, but one of material advantages. Religion has an obstructive role: the
contrary appears in Defoe's moral pamphlets. Xeenophobia appears only where there are no economic virtues; "with money in the pocket one is at
home everywhere." The plot of Robinson Crusoe is rooted in the realities of the time; merchants, colonists... Sex is placed under strict control as a
non-rational factor: there is no romantic love, and little sexual satisfaction. Matrimony is an investment. Crusoe desires a male slave. The story of Xury
is significant: relationships are treated in terms of their commodity value. With Friday, Robinson establishes egocentric master-slave relations. Only
when he receives mone does he feel deep feelings. His friends are those that secure his economic interests. Crusoe and Defoe are blind to aesthetic
experience. The natural scenery is exploited, not admired. If he plays with his animals, he doesn't dance with them. We find Crusoe's adventure
interesting because capitalist economic specialization has deprived us from a lot of daily life experiences. We only do one thing, and enjoy others
through printed matter. Crusoe experiences the Dignity of Labour: an absolute equivalence between individual effort and individual reward. Labour is
varied and inspiring. This is a Calvinistic idea: labour is a religious and ethical obligation. Friday doesn't bring relaxation, but extended productivity.
Defoe cofuses religious and material values: a sophistic creed. There is still a religious framework, but this will disappear in other authors.

Protestantism. Protestantism is associated to individualism. It promotes a direct contact between man and God. Protestants emphasize self-scrutiny;
journals are kept, and extreme egocentricity is promoted. Defoe was a Dissenter with no fixed creed. Crusoe has Puritan tendencies: toward self
examination, Bibliolatry, interpretation of natural phenomena in an egotistic way. But Crusoe is intended to be a neutral character, a man for whom we
could all substitute ourselves. Democratic individualism of Defoeno high birth for Robinson, etc. Defoe nonetheless subordinates allegory to reality
(i.e. he is a novelist, while Bunyan doesn't). Religion in his work is perfunctory: there is an unconscious secularization, due to economic and social
progress. Ties with the Church are loosened, resulting in individualism.

Crusoe is a Western myth: the man who can manage on his own, without any social restrictions, and usfulness as the rule, a philosophy of laissez-
faire. But it is a false myth: Defoe has disregarded the social nature of all human economies and the psychological effects of solitude. Moreover
Robinson has tools: he is not a primitive or a proletarian, but a capitalist. Crusoe turns his disgrace into a triumph: solitude is the prelude to the fuller
realization of the individual's potentialities. Defoe is conscious of this meaning, and he even hints that it is an allegory of his own life. An ethics of
resolution against bad circumstances; praise of personal alienation from society. Communication is false, only a mockery. The first novel presents us
with the annihilation of the relationships of the traditional social order: new relationships have to be built up.

4. Defoe as novelist: Moll Flanders

This is Defoe's most typical novel. Moll is a product of modern individualism; her crimes are rooted in the dynamics of economic individualism, she's
not a picaro. (The picaro is not interesting in himself; it is a literary convention for the presentation of satiric observations and comic episodes). The
reader identifies with Moll. Indigence is shameful: we see again Economic Man, similar to Robinson. Defoe has little control over his narrative: there
are unconscious blunders, and little consistency. There is no authorial consciencethis is ephemeral writing. Most novelists concentrate on a few
pictures and reduce synopses of action to a minimum. Defoe does the contrary, which weakens the force of the narrative. But it gives an impression of
authenticity. He writes unadorned prose, with many Anglo-Saxon words, and focusing on the primary qualities of objects (there are no colours, sound
or taste)related to the scientific and rational outlook of the eighteenth century. It is popular fiction, highly readable, and of a journalistic nature ("Mr
Review", Defoe's editorial character in "The Review", is similar to Moll Flanders as a narrator.

There is formal realism, but an incoherent structure. 2 parts, with a long first partMoll's career as a wife. The second tells her criminal activities and
their consequences. Five marriages, rather rudimentary interlockings. Her criminal adventures lead to her meeting in prison a former husband; later
she returns to her family in Virginia. There is a unifying mechanism, similar to "Roxana", based on relationships, both have inconclusive endings. Unity
comes through the central character, as in biographies (cf. Hume on identity) due to a desire to be realistic, or to an inability to be otherwise?
According to Aristotle, history is concerned with what actually happened, and poetry with the propable or necessary. Defoe then writes pseudo-history,
as a liar.

Moll Flanders is a novel of character without any psychological analysis: elections are made quickly and aptly, automatically. He assumes the
heroine's character withougt describing it. But we are told contradictory things; she has hidden information, etc. Is she a loving wife? A heartless
mother? Is she affectionate? She enters self-centered relationships with other characters. Moll is similar to Defoe: her feminine traits are superficial.
The novel was admired by Virginia Woolf because Moll shows no unconscious feminine traits. She is, according to Defoe, a public-minded citizen who
has had bad luck. She doesn't like vice for its own sake. But Moll is also unaffected by her surroundings.

A middle-class notion of gentility reigns, a restless and amoral individualism. There is an unconscious identification between the author and the
character. Defoe claims that it is a moral story, that crime does not pay, but this is unsubstantiated. Moll is not repentantthat would impair the delight
the reader takes in the action, and it would also be less immediate. Didactic commentaries fail to be clearly placed at any stage of moral development.
Formal realism appears here as an end, not as a means: there is no moral. Morals will later be expressed through the control of the point of view;
Defoe has no such control. Claims are sometimes made that he did have itthat he is morally detached from his heroine, e.g. in the ironical preface
(Virginia Woolf, Coleridge, E. M. Forster). There is often a bathetic transition from sentiment to action (money, rhum); but the irony has a dubious
status, there is no consistent ironical attitude throughout the novel. Defoe cannot ironizeonly impersonate (as in "The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters"). Only in an a historical view can Moll Flanders be considered a masterpiece, by judging it by the standards of our timewhich is a tribute
to Defoe's vitality as a writer. His formal realism mixes many traditions (tragedy, comedy, history journalism); irony can be achieved by contrasting the
attiudes peculiar to them, but Defoe doesn't know that. There is a lack of moral or formal pattern, a weakness of construction, an inattention to detail.
But he has a supreme talent as a realist portrayer of episodes. Richardson will have both assetswhich is why he is the real founder.

Defoe, like Marlowe, produces unconsciously autobiographic works, episodic in natureego vs. mundum. As in Stendhal, individualism rules: an
energetic and unwise vision of life. There is a kind of moral: an energetic stoicism, a comfortable vitality. The chance mingling of attitudes and
situations is original, and will influence later novels. Defoe creates both a new subject and a new literary form to embody it.

5. Love and the Novel: Pamela

Richardson solves some of Defoe's failures: he gives the novel a plot. The traditional theme of courtship is exploited in a new way, to give his novels
unity, not episodes.
Christianity (the courtship of the Virgin). However, courtly love was too conventionalized to be a novel plot. In England, a new conception of marriage
arises, through
I. Love as a positive value arises in Provence. Like individualism, it has its roots in h puritan influence. Marriage as God-given unity, difficult for women
to achieve. In Pamela we find romantic love combined with social class conflicts, and conflicts between sexual instinct and the moral code.

II. The values of courtly love and those of marriage can only be combined when there is consent, free choice. Early modern England was more liberal
to women than other countries. Romantic love and matrimony are the correlative of the elementary family and the disaggregation of the patriarchal
system. In Defoe and Richardson, there is a tendency to the assertion of individual freedom from family ties. But women are under Roman law; they
can't realize economic individualism. Roxana is a clear example. The need of a dowry was unfavorable to women.

III. There was a popular concern for these facts. The status of unmarried women declined; they come to be seen as ridiculous: the word 'spinster'
appears. They had to accept badly-paid jobs or dependence: there were no convents available for high-class spinsters. Richardson advocates such
convents. Bachelors appear as socially deplorable and morally dangerous (especially for Puritans). Richardson's Grandison declares: "I am for having
everybody marry." Pamela symbolizes the aspirations of all women in that period, and has been followed by many (in similar conditions). The marriage
ceremony goes on for 200 pages; at that time, the terms of marriage aren't still well defined. Mr. B tries to delude Pamela with a mock marriage.
Puritans support this view of marriageeven if it means that they must get married in an Anglican church.

IV. Feminine reading public: a taste for fiction and moral works. Pamela has both. Richarson has feminine tastes; domestic detail is an enjoyement to
women. The plot provides flattery on women, and discipline on men. The woman rises socially.

V. A clash of two attitudes on sex and marriage, represented by Richarson and Fielding. Richardson adjusts language to the new feminine code.
There is a decarnalization of the public feminine role, and a systematic bowdlerizing. (Richardson's prudery).

VI. These changes explain Pamela's unity and its combination of moral purity and impurity. A departure from Stiltrennunga combination of high and
low motives, e.g. chastity is valued by a servant-girl. The psychological and moral content is deeper than ever: barriers are not social, but
psychological. Puritanism builds a bridge between flesh and spirituality, through marriage (Courtly love doesn't). But woman must wait until she is
engaged to feel lovein Pamela, when she is going away. Both characters recognize themselves. The plot includes a peripety and recognition which
coincide (the best for Aristotle). This is made possible because of the unprecedented disparity between social roles and feelings. This has led to
contradictory interpretationsis Pamela a hypocrite? It is social circumstances that forbid openness. It is a sex-centered work; taboo is always the
centre of attention and interest. The novel appears as an initiation site to the fundamental mystery of society. Pamela is a combination of sermon and
strip-tease.

Chapter 7- Richardson as Novelist - Clarissa

Richardson is a conscious innovator: he hopes that Pamela will induce a new species of writing. Clarissarevolves better the problems of the unification
of narrative mode, plot, characters, and morals. There are no digressions: the themes spring from the subject (Richardson says).

I. A better use of the letter form. In Pamela, there is the dange of one-sidedness, compromising the credibility of the heroine. It ends up in a journal;
the editor is a clumsy device. In Clarissa the epistolary narrative carries the whole burden. It is a dramatic narrative rather than a history, Richardson
claims. The formal division rests on the dichotomy of the sexual roles: Clarisa and Lovelace write to people with their own morals, in an uninhibited
way. There is a relationship between the action and the narrative mode. In the first and second volumes, only Clarissa writes; then both, at last only
Clarissa. The tempo varies (e.g. in the rape scene). There is a careful characterization: Lovelace did not seem a complete villain at the time. Clarissa
sees that he has good sense at the bottom, and it is that which makes her fall in his power. The moral is that both parties were wrongher parents
ought'ntto have forced Mr Solmes on her, and she shouldn't have gone away. Christian morals. As in Pamela, virtue is rewardedbut in Heaven. In
spite of this, Clarissa is a tragedy. Knowledge of religion is weak, and there is a sense of defeat at the end. One third of the book is taken up by the
funeral. Funeral literature was fashionable at the time; even Puritans allowed rich funerals. In her death, Clarissa collaborates with God, who has
marked her for his own.

II. Richardson's moralizing, like Defoe's, is unpalatable. Fielding and Sterne are satirists: we don't judge their values. But Richardson's identification
with these values makes Clarissa coherent. An obsession for class distinctions. In Pamela, there is a colliding respect for nobility and a contempt for
Mr B's morals. In Clarissa, both belong to a similar class: wealthy landed gentry with aristocratic connectionsClarissa's a little less aristocratic. For
James, daughters are chickens brought up for the tables of other men. He is an ally of Solmeshe doesn't want Clarissa to have a a high dowry.
Solmes belongs to a lower class, but he is rich, and he only wants her father's estate (which is already hers, given her by her grandfather). Lovelace
appears as attractive and motivated by attraction, while Solmes is moved by money. Clarissa is alone: both family authority and economic
individualism go against her. She escapes to be free, not because of love. And to Lovelace, one of the two must be a prize. He believes at first that
women have no soulsat last he acknowledges hers as superior. All others, except for Clarissa, use people as means (which Kant will forbid to do).
Lovelace fears her when she is in his power, because of her inner inviolability. Lovelace believes women's bashfulness to be hypocriticala Cavalier
attitude, whereas Clarissa's is puritan.

Clarissa doesn't want to marry Lovelacean assertment of the seriousness of the code. A reformed rake will is not a good husband (compare here
the plot of Pamela). Lovelace becomes convinced that she loved virtue for its own sake.

Sexual repression can lead to self-deception (as in Pamela). In Clarissa, psychological tension arises from this self-deception. She gradually
discovers that she is in love with Lovalce, something which Anna Howe knew all along. Lovelace's sophistries, on the contrary, are conscious: his
honour consists in telling the truth to men and lying to women. Sadism is the extreme attitude of Lovelace's position. A sadistic sexual male vs. a
masochistic asexual female (the violation episode is one of extreme passivity). Clarissa has a sexual dream in which Lovelace stabs her: an equation
of sex and death by Clarissa. And she knows she's not wholly blameless.

There are various perverse deviations of sexual impulse in Clarissa's funeral. Diderot hails Richardson as the first who discovered the frightening
reality of unconscious life even in virtuous persons. Evil and good are mitigated; there is a denser psychological pattern. Lovelace's villainy is
conscious, buth there is a stifled goodness beneath. Their attitudes are extreme; human love is impossible because Clarissa doesn't recognize the
flesh nor Lovelace the spirit; he recognizes himself only through his rakery. They are star-crossed lovers: the barriers between them are psychological
the result of internalized social forces. In theory, the novel offers flat didacticism, but actually there is deep penetration and an insight into the final
ambiguity of human life.

Fielding as Novelist: Tom Jones

A widely different conception of the novel in Fielding and Richardson: two outlooks on life. Johnson condemns Fielding as coarse, although he is
nearer to his own neo-classicism. He was a friend of Richardson, and finds in Fielding "superficial characters of manners". It is not so much a contrast
between physical description vs. psychology as a matter of sketchiness vs. detail in both aspects. Fielding has less characterization and relies heavily
on a complicated plot (Coleridge speaks of the plot of Tom Jones as one of the three best plots in literature together with Oedipus and Volpone; a
return to norm in Fielding). In Moll Flanders money determines the action. In Fielding it is a plot device. Birth is a determining factor (in Defoe it was
money, in Richardson virtue): Fielding is a classist. Tom doesn't discuss the appropriateness of the custom that forbids him to marry Sophia. In
Richardson, the individual is crucified by society; Tom Jones adapts successfully. In Richardson, character changes and proximity drive the plot; in
Fielding, a kind of law over the individual. Individuals are individual manifestations of the great pattern of Nature; they are not individuals but a species
[cf. Johnson's neoclassicism.] Fieldings objective is taxonomic. Also, Richardson's approach is a breach of decorum, an intentional one. But it leads to
emotional artificialityexaggerated reactions in order to show feelings. There is little psychological development in Fielding. Has Tom learned
anything? We have to believe Fielding on this issue.

An Aristotelian view of character in Fielding. Actions are not the consequences of moral behaviour; personal relationships are unimportant. Neither can
touch a fixed character. There is a lack of communication between characters. Sub-plots are episodes which are dramatic variations of the central
theme. There is an explicit authorial control over a fictional world. Tom thinks of Sofia but goes with Molly: he is merely a puppet to desmonstrate an
idea of Fielding's. The importance of plot in the novel in general is in inverse proportion to that of character. A complicated plot leads to passive
agents, but happily contrived secondary characters, those not hampered by the needs of the narrative design (the protagonists sometimes do actions
which are at variance with their authors' intentions).

To Johnson, Fielding makes immoral people attractive. But Fielding's morals are more Shakespearean. He broadens our moral senses: sex is
accepted in the tradition of the comedy. The author as omniscient chorus; essayistic digressions, which produce a distancing effect. An ironical attitude
rowards the reality of his own creation. Moral sense is conveyed mainly through the author's speech, not through actiona defect. Fielding goes far
from formal realism, but gives a wider view of mankind and society. Not of the individual, though.

Realism and the Later Tradition: A Note

Sterne conciliates Richardson and Fielding, with both internal and external approaches to character: formal realism of time, place, and persons, and
lifelike action. Great detail. But it is a parody, not a novel. Narration in the present of the author's mind (as in Richardson)but it is past because of its
subject. External time as in Fielding (allusions to Flanders). Contrast between literature and reality; the time of reading, life, and the time of writing.
Mental life gives flexibility and accounts for dure. There is a freedom to comment, as in Fielding, but no unrealistic effect because it is autobiographic.
Contrastive scenes in order to assess (artificial in Fielding) are natural in Sterne because of the stream of consciousness. Toby is benevolent as
Clarissa, but there is also irony (Widow Wadman, similar to Lady Booby in Fielding). Characters are shown in detail, but they are humours. An
undermining or a reconciliation of Fielding and Richardson?

Jane Austen and Fanny Burney: Similar to Grandison, emphasis on daily life). Minute presentation of everyday life, but a detached attitude. Authorial
narration, not a participant narrator. But they do not produce an inauthentic effect, distancing is discreet. And the point of view is close to the
subjective world. The themes too: social and moral problems of economic individuals and the middle-class quest for status. They are centered on the
feminine role, marriage.

Notes from Ian Watt's book

The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. (Berkeley: U of California P; London: Chatto & Windus, 1957) Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1963.

Notes taken c. 1983.

Reading notes on Tom Jones

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Etiquetas: Crtica, Defoe, Fielding, Literatura inglesa, Novela, Richardson, Watt
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The spokesman of the middle class.
2. The novelist
The novel
The fathers of the English novel:
Daniel Defoe the realistic novel
Samuel Richardson the sentimental novel
Henry Fielding the mock-epic novel
Jonathan Swift the satirical novel