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

by Ian Watt, W.B. Carnochan (Afterword)

The Rise of the Novel is Ian Watt's classic description of the interworkings of social conditions, changing attitudes, and literary practices during the period when the novel emerged as the dominant literary form of the individualist era.

In a new foreword, W.B. Carnochan accounts for the increasing interest in the English novel, including the contributions that Ian Watt's study made to literary his introduction of sociology and philosophy to traditional criticism.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Literature, History, Theory, Academic

339 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Ian Watt was an English literary critic, literary historian and professor of English at Stanford University. His The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding is an important work in the history of the genre.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

O unread novelists don’t stare at me so
I’ve every intention to give you a go

Now no one should be forced to
Read any Paul Auster
And I think Malcolm Lowry
Is a little too flowery
And I couldn’t give a duck
About Pearl S. Buck
But I should have read a heck of
A lot more of Chekhov
And I find myself inchin
Towards Thomas Pynchon
(But Chimamanda Adiche
Is she really that peachy?
And does Joyce Carol Oates
Still float all my boats?
Is there now a gulf
Between me and Tom Wolfe?)

My relatives frighten
Me with Michael Crichton
And I’ve been on a mission
To avoid John Grisham
And I’d rather read Hustler
Than that one by Clive Cussler
No, it’s Balzac and Gissing
That I have been missing
Brooke-Rose, Gass and Stein
Should already be mine
And a fat oozing dollop
Of Anthony Trollope...

Ah, unread novelists, let me soothe all your fears
I’ll get round to you all in about fifty years

[notgettingenough · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is Dale Spender talking about this book: 'He devotes three hundred pages to male novelists and restricts his assessment of females to a single sentence: ‘‘The majority of eighteenth century novels were actually written by women.’’ '


This is the jacket blurb for Watt's book:

"The Rise of the Novel is Ian Watt's classic description of the interworkings of social conditions, changing attitudes, and literary practices during the period when the novel emerged as the dominant literary form of the individualist era. Erudite, yet gracefully written and often amusing, Watt's study examines the nature of the novel audience, the role of the book trade, and the changing structure of society at large."

Kind of makes you want to vomit, doesn't it?

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clarifying book, written with certainty. Ch I. Realism, the issue of correspondence between literary work and "reality" it imitates: cf Rembrandt's verité humain, not idéalté poétique. Ch II. The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel: audience not such a wide cross-section as, say, Elizabethan drama, and not "popular" as half-penny ballads, chapbooks abbreviating romances, etc. Though Defoe's stories of criminals..!
Defoe's audience, the trading classes: economic individualism and secular puritanism. (44)
Richardson's audience, women. Copiousness and speed of writing benefitted both the writer and the audience's ease of reading. Richardson unsurpassed in the "domestic privacy of his characters"; contrast other novelists' "dazzling illusion" of crucial events. Yet R himself, intensely private: he stopped going to church because he "could not bear a crowd."(174) R's inclusion of the ephemeral and trivial, essential to the "realism" of the novel; he leaves selectiveness to the reader.
Richardson, the precursor to Austen as a novelist of personality, "nothing but people." Lovelace is so seductive to the reader, R had to add footnotes emphasizing his duplicity. Richardson qualifies Clarissa's exemplariness by her moral smugness--a brilliant stroke. (Ch VII) Her sexual virtue signifies the moral supremacy of the middle class.
Clarissa's triumph, the inviolability of her inner, spiritual self; compare Middlemarch and Portrait of a Lady. Honor over reputation; her refusal to marry, virtue for its own sake.
Ch VIII. Fielding and the Epic Theory of the Novel. In Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art he regards the novel as manifestation of epic in the modern concept of reality. Contrarily, Richardson opposed the epic for causing "savage spirit" and wars. In Grandison, Lady Brandshaigh says epic poets propagate false honors, false glory and false religion.
But Fielding's attitude toward epic changed; by 1752, he says he prefers Herodotus and truer history to amusement and satisfaction. Fielding's comic approach runs into difficulties with emotions, such as Tom Jones' upon expulsion from the Allworthys--hyperbolic, Watt says.
Ch X. Realism and Later Tradition. Sterne's Tristram Shandy is not so much a novel as a parody of a novel, with precocious technical maturity; Sterne turns his irony against many of the narrative methods which the new genre had so lately developed.
But, as much as Clarissa embodies 18th Century goodness, so does Uncle Toby.

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Ching-In · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some reasons for my ug-ness.

1. Anyone which makes some random comparison to D. W. Griffith's skill in moviemaking (when it doesn't really have that much to do with the subject at hand) to show off your knowledge just shows you're a racist.

2. I hate books which assume everything ends and begins with England and dead white men and ignores the rest of the world and the other genders.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Watt investigates the origins of the early British novel by combining the formalist methodologies of The New Criticism (in its heyday then) with historical analysis. He argues that the novel emerges as the consequence of a distinctly new set of social and economic conditions associated with the advent of Western Modernity: the individualist orientation initiated by the Reformation and the writings of Locke & Descartes (as opposed to the traditionalism of the classical and medieval world), the rise of a middle class (with leisure and money to read), the emergence of Capitalism (with its highly sophisticated division of labor), and the legacy of the Protestant Reformation (especially in its Calvinist (and therefore highly introspective) expression). Watt presents his argument in chapters 1 & 2, expanding it in chapters 3-10, with particular reference to the fiction of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Sometimes his analyses of these authors’ works feel more like general case studies than focused attempts to flesh out his original thesis. The later chapters offer astute development and casual discussion in varying degrees.

Chapter I — Realism and the Novel Form:

Watt distinguishes between different notions of realism. “The main critical associations of the term ‘realism,’” he says, “are with the French school of realists,” which flourished in the 19th century and valued scientific objectivity in mimetic representation. The other kind of realism is philosophical realism, which maintains that the “real” exists in a world of Platonic forms, or ontologically fixed abstractions. To the French Realists, reality resides in specifics; to the philosophical realists, it resides in universals.
The novel rejects traditional plots, based on myth, history, and legend (the things pre-Modern literature relied heavily on). It deals in particulars, not neo-classical generalities. Watt identifies a number of formal distinctions between Modern novels (which tend toward specificity) and pre-Modern forms of literature (which tend toward generality). Characters in novels have proper names (not stock or historical names). Novels are time-full (rather than timeless); they are spatially precise (not vague). Finally, “the function of language is more largely referential in the novel than in other literary forms... the genre itself works by exhaustive presentation rather than by elegant concentration” (30).

Watt concludes this chapter by identifying the novel’s “formal realism”—“its premise, or primary convention, that the novel is a full and authentic report of human experience” (32)—as its defining attribute.

Chapter II — The Reading Public and The Rise of the Novel:

In this chapter, Watt explores “possible connections between changes in the nature and organization of the reading public, and the emergence of the novel” (35). Following Leslie Stephen’s lead, he shows how “the gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of literature addressed to them” (Stephen’s words, 35).

Statistics are hard to find, so Watt’s proceeds with caution. Annual publication of books increases almost fourfold during the century. By modern standards, literacy rates were extremely low in the 18th century, although they increased during the period. People with laboring-type jobs, like farming, were quite illiterate and couldn’t afford reading material. It was changes in an intermediate class (of richer farmers, shopkeepers, and tradesmen) that accounted for the main rise in the reading public. This class had more leisure to read and more money to buy reading material (like novels, which were very expensive). Circulating libraries gave those who could not afford novels the opportunity to read them, expanding the reading public even further, and raising concerns about “the spread of reading to the lower orders” (43). Upper- and middle- class women generally had more leisure than men, and frequently occupied their spare time reading. The division of labor no longer obligated women to perform the “old household duties of spinning and weaving, making bread, beer, candles, and soap,” etc. (44), so they had more time to read.
“The traditional view,” Watt says, “was that class distinctions were the basis of social order, and that consequently leisure pursuits were proper only for the leisure class” (46). Capitalism blurs these distinctions. Two groups of relatively poor people also contributed to the expansion of the reading public: apprentices and household servants. The reconstitution of England’s readership may have altered the “center of gravity of the reading-public sufficiently to place the middle class as a whole in a dominating position for the first time” (48). He also notes a shift in literary taste toward secularization. Watt concludes by quoting Fielding and Johnson about what both men saw as a democratization of literature.

Chapter III & IV — Defoe

All of Defoe’s characters pursue money, in accordance to the economic individualism of their time. “The primacy of individual economic advantage has tended to diminish the importance of personal as well as group relationships” (67).

The division of labor makes the novel possible in three ways. It allows for a greater number of significant differences of character, attitude and experience which the novelist can portray. It increases the amount of leisure time during which people can read, and it creates a need for wholeness (provided by the novel) which the division of labor denies members of society (whose labor is highly specific).

“Troeltsch claims that ‘the really permanent attainment of individualism was due to a religious, and not a secular movement, to the Reformation and not the Renaissance’” (74). And “it is the replacement of the rule of the church as the mediator between man and God by another view of religion in which it is the individual who is entrusted with the primary responsibility for his spiritual direction” (74). Puritans continually examined their inner lives for evidence of their place in the “divine plot of election and reprobation” (75). “This ‘internalization of conscience’ is everywhere manifested in Calvinism... In later generations the introspective habit remained where religious conviction weakened, and there resulted the three greatest autobiographical confessions of the modern period, those of Pepys, Rousseau and Boswell, all of whom were brought up under the Calvinist discipline” (75).

“It was through Puritanism that Defoe brought into the novel a treatment of the individual’s psychological concerns that was a tremendous advance in the kind of forensic ratiocination which had previously passed for psychological description in even the best romances, such as those of Madame de La Fayette” (85).

Watt identifies three possible influences on Defoe’s straightforward style: the scientific and rational outlook of the 17th century, a new plain style of preaching (which finds in exemplar in the sermons of Richard Baxter), and journalism, all of which valued a spare (if sometimes tautological) language of facts.

Above are the some of the more general claims Watt makes in these chapters III & IV. He dedicates the largest part of the chapters, however, to detailed formal analysis and discussion of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

Chapter V, VI, & VII — Richardson

Richardson’s importance as a novelist, Watt claims, can be largely attributed to the way in which he solves the formal problems presented by Defoe’s episodic narratives. He achieved this by basing his novels on a single action: a courtship. Watt connects the rise of the novel with the greater freedom afforded women in modern society (particularly, on the subject of marriage). This freedom, he also notes, was “achieved earlier and more completely in England than elsewhere” (138). The marriage choice is “especially fateful for women because it determines, not only her most important personal relationship, but also her social, economic, and even geographical future” (139). It makes sense, then, that readers (especially women readers) would be interested in reading about a subject that concerned them in such important ways. “Hypergamy, though not a convention of modern society, is a fairly constant convention of the novel; and its ultimate cause is surely the preponderance of women in the novel-reading public” (154).

Watt argues that the Puritan middle-class sexual code was largely responsible for shaping the attitudes toward marriage portrayed in Richardson’s novels. Puritans idealized marriage as the only institution in which human sexuality can appropriately be expressed. They also militantly policed extramarital sex. He says that the “question of the origins of this new sexual ideology is obviously very problematic: but there is at least very little doubt that the appearance of Pamela marks a very notable epiphany in the history of our culture: the emergence of a new, fully developed and immensely influential stereotype of the feminine role” (161): the hyper-delicate heroine.

Watt also links the rise of the novel (a form preoccupied with social relationships) to urbanization. The city presents more opportunities for such relationships to exist. At the same time, he identifies another relationship between urbanization and private experience (a central feature of the novel). Urban relationships tend to be more partial than complete, alienating urban man and giving rise to a new kind of private experience.

“The development of the novel’s concentration on private experience and personal relationships is associated with a series of paradoxes” (206): first, that it was impersonal, objective print that allowed for a large number of readers’ vicarious identification with fictional characters; second, that urbanization leads to a more secluded and less social way of life than ever before, while also giving rise to a kind of literature that tends to focus on private experience.

Above are some of the more general claims Watt makes in chapters V, VI, & VII. He occupies most of these chapters with developing these claims, although he reserves a significant portion of chapter VII to a more general discussion Clarissa.

Chapter VIII & IX — Fielding

Watt identifies an apparent loophole in his thesis when examining Fielding, whose work (in contrast to Defoe’s and Richardson’s) does not seem to be largely influenced by social change, and yet contains features that later become typical of the novel in general. Watt associates Fielding’s work with an independent and autonomous development within the Augustan world of letters. He claims that Fielding enlists the prestige of epic in order to dignify the then-frowned-upon form. Finally, he offers detailed analysis of Tom Jones. “Richardson,” he says, “takes us deeper into the inner workings of the human machine; but Fielding is surely entitled to retort that there are many other machines in nature besides individual consciousness” (289).

Watt finds the culmination of the English novel in the work of Jane Austen. It was she, he notes, that combined the insights of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, in such a way as to establish a precedent for the novels that followed. See quotes below.

“It cannot be claimed that [Defoe, Richardson, or Fielding] completely achieved that interpenetration of plot, character and emergent moral theme which is found in the highest examples of the novel” (15).

“Jane Austen’s novels... must be seen as the most successful solutions of the general narrative problems for which Richardson and Fielding had provided only partial answers. She was able to combine into a harmonious unity the advantages both of realism of presentation and realism of assessment, of the internal and the external approaches to character; her novels have authenticity without diffusiveness or trickery, wisdom of social comment without a garrulous essayist, and a sense of social order which is not achieved at the expense of the individuality and autonomy of the characters” (297). In short, they combine the merits of Richardson and Fielding, without containing any of their demerits.

[Amir K · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب را ده یازده سال پیش به سفارش استادم یوسف اباذری برای کلاس جامعه شناسی ادبیات خواندم و بسیار از آن آموختم. تا آنجا که به یاد دارم کتاب به بهترین شکلی، زمینه های شکل گیری رمان را به عنوان نوع ادبی خاص دنیای مدرن تشریح می کند و نسبت به نویسنده ای چون دانیل دوفو بصیرتی به دست می دهد که در آثار دیگر کمتر می توان یافت. متأسفانه اندک زمانی بعد از انتشار، نایاب شد و تا آنجا که من خبر دارم تجدید چاپ هم نشد.

[Naia Pard]

I finally did it!!!!!!!! I've finished it. Yeah

[Canan Elif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avrupa romanını ve roman üzerine okumayı çok seven biri olarak tam bana göre bir kitaptı. Çok şey öğrendim, Ufuk açıcıydı.

[Antonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good reference book for those who are interested in the "rise of the novel" (in 18th century England to be precise). Even though it was written 50 years ago, it is still relevant in novel studies and also accessible for the non-academic. Watt focuses on three authors: Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson, and he also expands on the religious, economic, and social factors which enabled the popularity of the novel and the changes which the novel brought forth in terms of plot and characters. While this study can be challenged and expanded to include authors from outside the dead white male canon (which I am given to understand has happened), this book still remains a useful tool in critically analyzing some very well-known English novels.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dated, of course, but essential if you care about English fiction in the eighteenth century and/or the history of criticism. Almost everyone who has written about the novel in English since has to be read in the shadow of Watt--they are responding to him, arguing with him, revising his argument, adding to it, disputing it, raging against it, but they cannot ignore it or him. The biggest hole in Watt's argument, for me, has to be his erasure of women writers and of the romance tradition; without considering these, as I constantly remind my students, our understanding of eighteenth-century fiction and the fiction that followed it is seriously distorted.

[Florina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the equivalent of that ever-so-wistful Juliette Binoche movie, Chocolat, only for literary studies. You feel like you've stuffed yourself with delicious, salty caramels and pralines, but in the form of a rich analysis of eighteenth-century literature.

[Christie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super useful for those who are not experts in 18th century lit, chock full of interesting social/historical information, and downright compelling in an old-school way.

[Jonathan Honnor]

A deserving classic of literary criticism in this area, quite technically brilliant, very eloquent while always remaining clear and precise in its thought. Wonderful in providing and examining the importance of the historical context. In many places, especially the Defoe chapters and defining the features of "formal realism" it has the effect of revelations that are similar to the fish in DFW's modern parable realising that "this is water" -- seemingly so ubiquitous in its import and yet epiphanic in how it gets you to notice it. The chapter on Clarissa, although it does not reach conclusions that are quite so revelatory, nevertheless remains fresh even after nearly 70 years. If one is ever in doubt about the powers of literary criticism to "make discoveries", to actually mean something and not be mere rhetorical posturing, this is the type of book to read.

This is a book originally published in 1957, so it has some oddities, as all criticism does, of its particular historical frame of reference. I think my major gripe with this book, which is its treatment of Fielding, is caused by this historical frame of reference, so not necessarily Watt himself. Watt appears to view Fielding as something of an afterthought and he is treated less seriously than Defoe and Richardson are. Although not explicitly, he seems to concede to Dr Johnson's higher valuation of Richardson. This is a very fair and reasonable opinion to have, but Watt goes on to minimise the importance of Fielding in the literary tradition, firstly claiming that Fielding's "comic epic in prose" theory of his novel is unimportant ("the epic influence on Fielding was very slight, mainly retrograde, and of little importance in the later tradition of the novel") and then that Fielding himself has had little of a subsequent tradition ("In his effort to infuse the new genre with something of the Shakespearean virtues Fielding departed too far from formal realism to initiate a viable tradition"). I believe the first claim does not give sufficient attention to the ways in which epic always influenced picaresque, very broadly and generally yes, but still significantly -- and there is perhaps more serious comparison to be sustained with the formal innovations that Tom Jones makes (the epic hero's solitariness, questions surrounding their masculinity and heroic role, and their search for identity are all thematic concerns of Tom Jones). The second claim I think now deviates from a general narrative that Fielding has had a major role in the development of the novel. Look no further than James Wood's Against the Day review which, if it is influenced by Johnson and Watt's dichotomy between Richardson and Fielding and their higher valuation of Richardson, nevertheless sees Fielding as the progenitor of a kind of counter-tradition to the Richardson, James, Proust, etc. tradition which is to be found in Smollett, Dickens (to an extent) and especially Barth and Pynchon. Watt was writing before Barth and Pynchon, so it is understandable that the "tradition" with Smollett and Dickens, with Dickens only halfway in the tradition, would have looked abortive at the time.

Furthermore, I feel there is more going on with Fielding's irony than Watt gives credit in his analyses, which is somewhat disconcerting from a critic who is normally so thorough and perceptive. The analysis of the 'emotional artificiality' of Fielding, for example, in the fact that Tom Jones, when expelled from Allworthy's house "fell into the most violent agonies, tearing his hair from his head, and using most other actions which generally accompany fits off madness, rage and despair" or when reading Sophia's parting letter that he read it "a hundred times over, and kissed it a hundred times as often". Watt does not appear to appreciate the comedy of these moments, that there is a certain ironic and paternal distancing of the author/narrator from Tom Jones in both these moments. Of course Tom Jones does not actually read the letter a hundred times, and the ridiculous agonies of Tom Jones play upon the unreality of the fiction (hence Fielding's link to the postmodern tradition) and a paternal, playful recognition of how ridiculous Tom's current miseries will be in the grand scheme of the novel. The working of the irony is indeed too complex for a review such as this, but I think its working is far more sophisticated (that is to say, far more Austenian or progenitive of Austen) than Watt gives Fielding credit.

There are some further interesting takes about the realist tradition more broadly: namely that Joyce's Ulysses is "in so many ways the climax of the novel's development" -- an opinion I have heard expressed by my undergraduate tutor, and indeed something not easy to disprove, despite the subsequent successes of postmodern literature. And that Austen is the synthesis of the Richardson and Fielding modes, Austen reaching the climax of 18th century literature, is a take that I quite enjoy. Although Watt's subsequent castigation (?) of the frequent provincialism of the novel as a form due to its largely female readership is very confusing. Probably another fault attributable to it being written in 1957.

[Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessante o estudo de Watt sobre a origem do romance moderno, “culpando” da ascensão e estabelecimento do gênero a três autores ingleses. Apesar de que ninguém no seu são juízo possa dizer que Richardson, Defoe e Fielding não são alguns dos romancistas mais importantes da história literária, parece-me que o pesquisador está preenchido de um sensacionalismo patriótico que lhe impede ver para além da Inglaterra. Óbvio que esta obra é um estudo de três autores ingleses e, portanto, carecia de sentido apresentar outros focos literários do momento como a Espanha ou França, mas não deixa de ser verdade que Watt trata o romance desses autores como os únicos romances proveitosos criados nas últimas décadas do século XVII e começo do XVIII.
Em certo momento chega a afirmar que os franceses colheram das raízes deixadas pelos três literatos previamente explicitados, o que me parece uma afirmação senão duvidosa, pelo menos ousada demais para uma pesquisa que pretende ser séria. Digo isto porque Watt se vale de opiniões de alguns franceses, como Diderot, para sentenciar suas apologias ao romance inglês. A lógica do professor é a seguinte: Se Diderot, um francês, disse que na França, no XVIII, não havia escritor algum como Richardson ou Defoe, então pode-se dizer que, na França, o Romance era indubitavelmente mais fraco que na Inglaterra.
De qualquer forma, apesar de que a lógica de Watt em certos momentos se aflore em certos atributos de juízo evidenciados por um patriotismo exacerbado, não posso apagar os méritos dele – que não foram poucos. Em primeiro lugar, vale-se do texto literário para falar do social e estético, isto é, não faz como a maioria dos pesquisadores do XX, que se valem do exterior ao texto literário para explicar o texto literário. Em segundo lugar, recorre a inúmeras fontes da época, esquecendo-se propositalmente de estudos contemporâneos sobre o local, o que dá à pesquisa um teor sincrônico bastante aguçado. E por fim, Watt não se contenta com umas poucas obras literárias, mas escarva na maioria, dando assim um maior e panorâmico olhar da produção literária dos autores que se propõe analisar.

[John Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although its subtitle might suggest otherwise, this is much more than a purely literary study. It’s concerned with sociology, economics, philosophy, and religion as well as with the novel in English.

Ian Watt’s book, first published in 1957, is tremendously important. You might say that the novel has risen twice, first as a form of expression, second as an object of substantial critical study, and the latter came about only in the middle years of the 20th century. Watt’s book was part of a rising wave, but its value has endured (the afterword assesses this nicely), as is shown by the fact that The Rise of the Novel was given a second edition in 2001.

Beyond its academic interest, though, it’s endlessly fascinating, even eye-opening, for anyone who’s interested in cultural history and how the novel came to be the dominant literary form of our time. These are some of the elements of Watt’s study:
• The increasing importance to writers of sales to the public as patronage declined.
• The increase in literacy and leisure time, which contributed to the expanding audience for novels.
• The rise of what Watt calls economic individualism, the influence of which can be seen in Daniel Defoe’s life as well as in the plots of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
• The growing use of letters for personal, as opposed to business, purposes, which made epistolary novels—such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa—a newly reasonable form.
• The Protestant habit of self-examination.
• The attempt to impart respectability to the novel by crossing it with elements of the epic. Hence Henry Fielding’s attempt to present in Joseph Andrews what he called a comic epic in prose.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's nothing original I can say about the importance of this book -- the introductory chapter and his commentary on Robinson Crusoe is essential. The rest of the book, however, does seem to falter in comparison with these.

[Nawel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juste Ian Watt qui défonce Defoe sur 300 pages, j’ai adoré

[Bradley William Holder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paranoically (though not unpleasantly) smooshed between the rock of rationality and the effervescent hard place of f/artsy flimflammery. This is where I reside most days of the week. But there's enough wasted time back there, and less and less time up here in the front seat, to make taking the wheel, which is to say just like Jesus of Nazareth would, both daunting and absolutely necessary. So I've taken to reading books about books, with the same deftness of intent that I'd once taken to reading books about writing books. My father, if he taught me anything, taught me how to be self-sufficient—how to learn what no one, not even dear old dad hisself, will teach you. So I read it. This one. I read it, even though few'd deem it fortuitous to do so, like one reads the operator's manual of a beat-up 1993 Oldsmobile. You know the one. It's got scratches on the hood from overzealous de-icing. It smells like spilt coffee. Regrettably, no one—not even once—ever had an orgasm in there.

And yet it is a mistake—as well as an outright impossibility—to read a book such as this in only one way. Everyone seems to want this nowadays. Despite the efforts of the post-structuralists, as if their successors have missed both the memo as well as the point, it makes about as much sense to criticize this book (i.e., the depth of its scholarship, the beauty of its language) on the sole grounds of not crediting enough 18th-century women writers and readers—and, by the way, it does (i.e., credit them)—as it does for criticizing a technical manual for not driving the bloody car for you. Look. I get it. There's a narrowness of scope here that, irregardless of identity politics, is more than a little unnerving. But scholarship—that is, what you might call "scientific inquiry"—is, by definition, narrow. The lovely thing about books is that we can, sometimes (if you're up for it, boyo) even immediately after finishing, read more than just one. Here's how it starts. Namely, our education.

Something is happening to me. My interests have become both historical and aesthetic, both technical and spontaneous. Picasso painted some pretty good landscapes in his day. Did you know that? Nietzsche was an abhorrent, like literally offensive to the ossicles, composer. You can't always get what you want; but try, try again. If at first you don't succeed, sometimes (you just might find) you get what you need. While—at least it seems to me—there are no prerequisites for attempting to write experimental fiction (or, um, whatever else you want to call it; maybe "fiction" is too restrictive a term for the aims of the experimentalist), my leftist hand of darkness does not object to another ossified reliquary of sense data. I'm like a LLM, baby. Give me some more information to compile, compare, mix together, separate, fling, retrieve, destroy, reorganize, resize, reshape, undo, recreate. I, too, very rarely (if ever) understand what (and why I'm doing it) the hell I'm doing.

While I have your attention, then, let's continue talking about the narrowness of scholarship. Just quickly. I just want to make sure I haven't offended you. I don't ever want to do that. My whole point is just that we shouldn't throw away the baby—even if it's straight, heteronormative, cisgendered, and of European descent—with the bathwater. Of course we shouldn't allow (e.g.) scientific racism to proliferate. Of course we shouldn't permit systemic racism in our schools and police departments. But just because a scholar makes an off-hand comment about the historical significance of DW Griffith without also mentioning his support for the Ku Klux Klan doesn't mean that the scholar, then, supports the Ku Klux Klan. I don't want to sound like a philosophy bro, but that's like a logical fallacy, bro. I once took a master's module on Searle's Chinese Room without once hearing about the gross stuff Searle did in private rooms. That's okay. It just wasn't relevant. Okay, let's move on.

Lately I've been, for the first time intentionally, positioning myself, perhaps misguidedly self-importantly, within a larger tradition of creative endeavor. I often lament my artistic isolation. The Romantics were all friends. The Beats were all lovers. The Bloomsbury group. Oulipo. The obnoxious, though good-intentioned all-in-this-togetherness of the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets. Nothing great and enduring is ever done by yourself. Just ask that janitor. Outsider artists are just that. Outside. It doesn't matter if their "genius" derives from their solitude, from the purity of their perspective. It doesn't matter if they don't need anyone else to create. They still need other people to succeed. But, I suppose, it's another worthwhile question. What is success anyway? I oftentimes feel (especially since, as of late, I've been reading about experimental fiction as a necessary outpouring of the artist's unconscious) that it's better to just fucking write than it is to get so hung-up on being read.

But let's get back on track. (I keep getting pulled to the left, or is it (rather) toward the back.) It's always delightful—and, regardless of material, it's just about assured—to find more than you expect (that is, like informationally) to find in whatever book you happen to be reading. The best part about this book in particular is not just that it is so well-researched when it comes to the specific novels under investigation (if not a little too narrowly, as alluded to, centered around three early English proto-novelists; but be advised, this is a narrowness deeply and diligently dug) but also that it sheds more than a little light on the socioeconomic and otherwise idealogical runway that allowed the 18th-century "novel" to pick up speed and take flight into the future, if its thesis can be trusted, that we now (better or worse) inhabit. People have come to this book's defense claiming that it doesn't make it its mission to define the novel per se. Even if it did, there are still others to be read.

Confidence (for the artist) goes a long way, doesn't it? How can one possibly improve, find their voice, figure out what works and what doesn't (i.e., for them) if they are so fixated on meeting some arbitrary standard of quality that they are physically unable to begin (or finish, for that matter)? The closer I get to the end of something (even this review, let's say), the more anxiety-ridden I become. We've already come so far. We've done so much good work. Everything is going so well. This only means that when the inevitable misdeed occurs—perhaps it already has—that we will be ruining so much more than if we had only written a few paragraphs. It is a more comfortable state of mind, then, for the would-be artist to be in the fresh garden of pure, undeveloped concepts. My story will go like this. Not yet seen clearly, still a glimmer of potential in the eye of a godlike being. All that remains to be done is to give our impression a shape and a color. But it will always fall short, won't it?

According to Watt, it is a distinctive feature of the novel, especially when compared to the literature of, for example, the ancient Greeks that a focus be placed on the lives of individual humans with individual hopes and fears and individual psychological states. Never mind that only one of the three "novelists" discussed in The Rise of the Novel (to wit, Samuel Richardson, who's now, in addition to so, so many others, here on my so-pinged-it's-useless sonar screen) fully, or at least fully-enough, embodies the spirit of this project. Perhaps more interesting is the historical context that allowed inviduality, as a virtue, to flourish in the Western world. I'd always, rather stupidly, believed this to be an American invention. It's really a capitalist one. Having spent some time living in a culture that Hofstede would gladly classify as collectivist, I—having shaken off my Occidental creature comforts at once—now find myself reneging, blissfully confused, in more ways than one.

What then? Do the focal point of the artform and the process of its elicitation align? Must they? More specifically, do I have to write a novel about the importance (the goodness!) of independence, of isolation and loneliness and solitude and self-reliance alone? I think that when I was young I was attracted to the activity of writing because it required no one else. (Later on, I got it into my head to be a filmmaker. But then that would've necessitated talking to people, telling them what to do, managing, delegating, maybe even (GASP!) collaborating. Yeah, not for me.) And now, these days, we find ourselves at a kind of crossroads in the West—that is, Zeitgeistwise. We've (for argument's sake) kept the novel form, which began as an expression of the value of the individual consciousness, but modified it to embrace a-whole-nother, contradictory set of ideals. Of course, we can have both. They were never mutually exclusive. It was always just a matter of emphasis.

Watt, then, narrow-minded (ah, let's from now on say "focused") though he may be, does, if I remember correctly, take note of this ironic tendency of the novel form, the novel-writing act, and the members of the community—a collection of individuals—that both are meant to edify. The matter is far from settled, the least of which for me, a growing manboy who has books to read, confidence to cultivate, books to write and—despite the encroaching weight of self-doubt, of personal ruination—books to finish and gleefully discard. Thankfully, the novel, whether in terms of mood, moral, or method, like any creative modality, only exists insofar as it can change, as it can interact with its environment and be made to express the ethos of its boldest experimenters. Watt has little time to give to the importance of breaking boundaries; I've given it more than enough. Let's move forward, then. Together, separate. You. Me. Admit it. Five outta five. Would read for the first time a second time.

[Devon]

my notes

The Rise of the Novel:
Chapter 1
relationship between growth of reading public and emergence of the novel (7)
How does novel change from 17th c france (9)
Connection to french realism– just displaying life (11)
Rejection of universals (12)
Correspondence between life and literature (12)
Novel most reflects individualist and innovating reorientation (13)
Defoe and richardson not taking plots from mythology or history (14)
Unlike chaucer, spenser, shakespeare, and milton
Dominant critical theory if defoe time was traditional plots (15)
Names used to be characteristic (18) or non particular or unrealistic
Commonplace fmILY NAMES (19)
Th green saying much of man’s ;ife hard to represent bc boring (22)
Shakespeare dead before anachronistic enters english (23)
Getting facts in richardson for timeline (24 and 25)
Author and philosopher (27)
Parallel of french and english fiction (30)
But french fiction stands apart from main tradition of the novel
Too stylist to be authentic ? (30)
Defining the distinctive narrative mode of the novel (31)
Expectations of the reader influence the novel (31)
Chapter II:
Changes in the 18th century reading public (35)
In late 18th century, estimate that 80,000 of 6 mil constituted the reading public (36)
Book buying probably only in 10s of thousands
Sales of full length novels were smaller especially when books were secular (36)
Not many people literate in modern sense equaling reading and writing in english (37)
In towns, people were probably more literate (38)
Idea of the intermediate class between poor and “Well-to-do” (40)
Novels became more medium price range (41)
Leisure and women readers (43)
Tendency for literature to become a primarily feminine pursuit (43)
Other forms of leisure were more masculine (44)
Idea of leisure pursuits only for classes which have time for leisure (46)
Window tax reduced windows so no light to read (47)
Reading only going down to tradesmen and shopkeepers or favored apprentices or indoor servants (48)
BUT becoming more middle class (48)
Lit thus starting to also be addressed to those classes (48)
Increasingly important feminine component of the public (49)
Lots of religious publishing (50)
Writing becoming a branch of commerce (53)
Novel regarded as debased and only to sell for the reading public (54)
Lit culture in france was still oriented towards the court whereas english was not (58)
Defoe and richardson both more middle class london tradesmen writing for these classes (59)
Were inside their class and this able to express their class

Chapter III
Rise of individualism (60)
Individual independence from each other and away from idea of tradition (60)
Autonomy of the individual 60)
From rise of industrial capitalism and spread of protestantism
Literature viewing commerce with favor (61)
RC not actually a travel and adventure novel (66)
Pursuit of money actually
Sex according gto weber is one of the most non rational factors in life (67)
For defoe: economic and moral virtue in the male is no guarantee of a profitable matrimonial investment (67)
Cruesoe does marry at the end of the novel (68)
Women as economic (68)
Male side also contributes to marriage plot novel as about social standing etc
Style noble of french lit (79)
Novel requires a worldview that is centered on the social relationships between individual persons (84)
Later novelists inheriting puritainism w/o the religiosity (85)
RC falling with other great myths of western civ (85)

Chapter IV
Clara reeve and the progress of romance (93)
Punishment for offenses against property more severe starting in 1728 (96)
Defoes novels being ethically neutral (117)
Secularisation of individual morality (128)
Defoe (and richardson) focusing on character and personal relationships as essential elements in the structure and not as subordinate instruments !! (131)

Chapter V
Richardson solving formal problems that defoe doesnt (135)
Plot
Avoided episodic plot by making his novels about courtship (135)
Amour courtois in 11th century provence is start of treating love with respect (135/136)
Forms of medieval lit which paid attention to everyday life no love and vice cersa (136)
Heroic chastity (136)
In england, code of romantic love melded to religious social and psychological reality– marriage and family (136)
Paradise lost as the only epic of married life (137)
Values of courtly love couldnt be combined with marriage until marriage becomes more about choice (138)
Freedom of marriage arrives in england earlier than other places (138)
Economic individualism made parents and children more separated (138)
Elementary family to AR Radcliffe brown or conjugal family for durkeim (139)
Women need to make the right marriage, still property of husband (141)
Decay of domestic industry leaving too many women without work (142)
Also w/o dowry going into older marriage (142)
Bunyan’s “who would keep a cow of their own that can have a quart of milk for a penny” (143)
Illicit affairs
Employers forbidding servants to marry (144)
In 18th century, women no longer positive economic assets to household (145)
Career of authorship only open to a small minority (145)
More bachlors in england too (146)
Still problem of economic individualism and conjugal family
Why majority of novels since pamela are marriage plot (148-149)
More novels being marketed to women (151)
But women didnt just read only romances and novels
hyper gamy as being a convention of the novel (154)
Idealisation of marriage as protestant (155)
Paphian stimulus (159)
Sensible marriage choice and not sex
Friendship and marriage (160)
Richardson: friendship is the perfection of love
Women as being separate from sexual impulses (160)
Pamela's daughters 1937 book (161)
Decarnalization of the public feminine role (163(
Pamelists and antipamelists (168)

Chapter VI
Richardson’s formal realism (175)
Reorientation of the narrative perspecti ve (175)
Increasing segregation (178)
Religiosity less in england (179)
Decline if religious values (180)
Novel supplanting work of journalists in detailing the every day (180)
Lady Chatterley's lover (185)
Urbanisation and the novel (185)
Movement of prosperous into suburb (186)
Very rich and very poor no suburbs (187)
Privacy of the suburb is essentially feminine (187)
Changing in familial sleeping patterns and privacy (187/188)
Devotion to familiar letter writing (189)
Increase in leisure and literacy of middle class women (189)
Amateur letter writing in pamela helping break decorum of prose (193/194)
Print is only medium for intimate of letter writing (196)
All major literary forms were originally oral (196)
Novel is only literary genre essentially connected to print (196)
Public and private voice (197)
Impersonal authority of print (198)
Novel can detail sexual life in the way that other forms cannot (199)
Shamela and accusing that pamela was popular because of sexual stimulation (202)
Ulysseys connection to pamela (206)

Chapter VII
In richardson’s day, didactic function of art best served by characters as paradigms of vice and virtue (213)
Tradition of funeral literature (217)
Idea of an upstart man (221)
Authoritarian nature of the family (222)
Clarissa inheriting shakes order
Tragedy of feminine individualism (225)
Clarissa as a paragon of delicacy (225)
Stereotype of evil males (231)
Sadistic and sexual male (232)

Chapter VIII
fielding ‘s formula of “the comic epic in prose” (239)
Defoe’s essay on literature (241)
Fielding steeped in the classical position (248)
In 1742, form of novel in disrepute (258)

Chapter IX
Class fixity in tom jones (270)
Proper place of sex in human life (278)
Aristotelian priority of plot over character has been reversed (280)

Chapter X
Literary output ramp up in mid 1700s (290)
Ulysses as the climax of novel development (296)
Continuity between narrative method and social background between 18th c novelists and successors (299)

[Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A seminal (rather than ovular) text in the study of the origins of the novel. Watt ties the origins to boys and the emergence of what he calls formal realism. This linking lets him focus on Defoe as a slightly inept progenitor whose economic individualism allows him to write in almost granular detail about the lives of his protagonists, insofar as those lives are connected to material goods. So the big hits here are Crusoe and, especially, Moll Flanders. It is when Watt turns to Richardson, especially Clarissa, that he waxes most rhapsodic. At the time he was writing, the critical currents were all running Fielding's way against Richardson, so perhaps Watt in part is compensating for that trend. Formal realism in Richardson's hands, especially in Clarissa, becomes an impossibly refined tool for investigating human personality and consciousness. There are almost no terms of praise too high here for Watt. It should come as no surprise then to find Watt pouring cold water over the flames of Fielding adoration. For if there is one thing Fielding does not do, it is investigate human personality and consciousness through formal realism in any sustained way. Watt is alive to a few of Fielding's virtues in Tom Jones, as he sees them, but they are almost always characterized as inferior to those of Richardson. Fielding's Augustan reverence for classical humanism and his intrusive narrator are the main culprits here. There is a pretty fine concluding chapter with some perceptive remarks on Sterne and some rather telling ones on Austen as, in many important senses, the culmination of trends that find imperfect beginnings in Richardson and Fielding.

It is easy to cavil at lots in this book. Taking Watt to the woodshed for his focus on male authors is an old game. No one would suggest this text should be the be-all and end-all for studies on the novel. Naturally it should be supplemented by McKeon, Bender, Spender, McDowell, Ballaster and many others. Nevertheless, most of these later studies use Watt's observations and arguments as a useful starting point. For that reason, his work remains important. And there are many local readings of the texts he focuses on that remain on target even today. It is true that he radically (and to my mind, inaccurately) dismisses the relevance of religion in Defoe, for instance. His dismissal of Fielding's narrator seems harsh and somewhat tone-deaf now. Nevertheless this is an important work that retains its position as a place to begin studies on the novel in the eighteenth century. Watt's thinking about the importance of formal realism remains powerful and influential today; the merits far outweigh the defects.

[Fahimeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt is a classical study of history of the novel, or it is better to say its genesis in England. Watt analyzes three main English novelists in the advent of narrative fiction: Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, and Henry Fielding. He also explains different types of their narration type from historical, sociological, economical, and biographical aspects while comparing and contrasting their themes and techniques of narration. This book is a good beginning to study the history of novel from different aspects although it is not that much about the narration itself as it is the concern of formalists and structuralists. Moreover, it is really informative about different backgrounds that resulted in the emergence of novel.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

finally finished this. main claim: lowest common denominator of the novel is its formal realism. this is what separates the novel from other literature (tragedy, comedy, poetry) : its emphasis on the ordinary. defoe, richardson, and fielding, as early progenitors of the novel, all have very different methods of reflecting the world, but they are not necessarily opposing methods, as all are realist approaches. as such, they can be seen as early exemplars/models of the variants of realism that have since appeared throughout the history of the novel (despite the word "realism" being so loose, multivalent and even in some ways controversial). in this way "experimentalism" and "realism" in the novel are not necessarily opposed, as the history of the novel is essentially a history of experiments in realism. seminal, interesting, and so, so dry.

[Jeremy]

In some ways, this can be seen as a Marxist analysis of how a social period (expansion of the middle class in the 18c) relates to the emerging popularity of the novel.

See here for an argument that the novel is Protestant art.

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perfectly fine, but it's not the rise of the novel. It's the role of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding in the English novel - which is quite a fair bit narrower.

[Anderson Rearick III · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watt's affirmation and support that Robinson Crusoe is English's first novel has stood me in good stead throughout my academic life. Others will howl about the anglo-centeredness of the claim pointing to a range of long works which should be considered the first novel. Usually these claims are built on the fictional nature of a narration and its length. But this misses the central qualities of the modern novel, its realism in portray of the human mind and its emphasis on the middle class. It also misses the point that it was from this work that the vast and ubiquitous novel, now the genre of choice throughout the globe, sprang. There certainly were works earlier which had elements of fiction and length (I am thinking of by Murasaki Shikibu's "Tale of Genji" as well as "The Satyricon," written probably by Gaius Petronius,). Howeverno work before Defoe reveals the workings of the human mind and spirit in such detail and does so in a narrative so realistic that readers were inclined to believe it as fact. And none did so in such a way that there followed a whole range of innovators who would go one to introduce a genre to first the west and then the entire world of fiction which Defoe himself was at lost to defend. I know this may bug some of you out there but this is a case in which a "dead white male" really did reshape the world of literature. Ian Watt was right. Thanks Dean Young for assigning this book!

[Jing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in sophomore year of college, more than a decade ago, and the book has always stayed with me throughout various moves since then, probably because deep down I've always loved it although over the years I've forgotten the reason for such love and connection.

I finally thought to pick it up again a few weeks ago, after having read through Lucy Worsley's excellent and vastly insightful biography of Jane Austen which made me itch to learn more about the form of writing which was so new and so ever-evolving during Austen's lifetime, and was surprised at how much highlighting I'd done when I first read it and how many margin notes I'd made. Of course I don't think I ever made it all the way through, as I'd read mostly only the assigned bits and pieces. Still, it's a fascinating book, which I now finally have the wisdom to appreciate. I haven't ever had the courage to try to make my way through Clarissa, but after reading Ian Watt's minute analysis of the importance of that work I'm tempted to read it again...

All in all, a great introduction to the history of the novel and I'm glad I re-read it.

[Antonio Gallo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il suo Rise of the Novel: Studi di Defoe, Richardson e Fielding (1957) è un lavoro importante nella storia del genere. Anche se pubblicato nel 1957, la nascita del romanzo è ancora considerato da molti studiosi letterari come uno dei lavori più importanti sulle origini del romanzo. Il libro ripercorre la nascita del romanzo moderno filosofico, sottolineando le tendenze economiche e sociali, e le condizioni che diventarono di primo piano nel 18 ° secolo. E' utile anche oggi, come nel XXI secolo, ribadire l'importanza di questo saggio per la storia e l'analisi del romanzo e riproporne la lettura, non solo per gli esperti, ma per chiunque sia interessato al romanzo e alla storia europea.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very deftly handled discussion of the contextual forces that fostered the novel in England, with likewise controlled, deliberate readings of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. This book was a job well done: Watt clearly did his reading and argued his points clearly. It’s a little dated, by the look of its critical apparatus and the breeziness of some of its generalizations, and one might venture, outdated - but what would that mean? Nowadays, either that it fails to represent X identification or it fails to take account of Y aspect of specialized study. Whereas it reads like a fine piece of scholarship in its own right.