Part I: Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957)

Formal realism = the narrative method whereby the novel embodies the circumstantial view of
life; not a literary doctrine or purpose, but a set of narrative procedures typical of the novel a
more immediate imitation of reality, close correspondence art-reality
The NOVEL as typical of the MODERN AGE < new, news, novella (Bandello, Cervantes)
general temper: critical, anti-traditional, innovating
method: the study of the particular experience by the individual investigator who, ideally at
least, is free from the body of past assumptions and traditional beliefs
problems: the nature of the correspondence between words and reality; fidelity to human
experience; verisimilitude
FEATURES
1. The formelessness of the novel (compared with tragedy and the ode): rejects any preestablished formal convention
2. Rejection of traditional plots (as taken from mythology, history, legend or previous literature)
Defoe: took little notice of the dominant critical theory and types of plot of his day; merely
allowed his narrative order to flow spontaneously from his own sense of what his protagonists might do
next.
3. Individualization of characters: proper names; particular individuals in the contemporary
social environment. Detailed presentation of background
4. Particularized time
5. Particularized space; Existence at a particular locus in time and space; Insistence on the time
process and on actual physical environment; detailed depiction of concerns of everyday life (vs. the
a-historical look of ancient, medieval and Renaissance literature)
6. Language: prose: an authentic account of the actual experiences of individuals
The descriptive, referential and denotative use of language: words closely corresponding to
their objects (concrete particularity) immediacy and closeness of the text to what is being described.
QUESTIONS
The epistemology of the novel
Credibility, verisimilitude
Matters of fact, true history
What kinds of facts can be credibly assessed?
The generic contexts of the novel
True history versus romance
But is this a linear process?
What other genres are relevant to the rise of the novel?

Part II: The Rise of the Novel in Early Modern Europe:

!!! formal realism (cf. Watt) + historical context (rise of middle class, commercial capitalism,
individualism)
The dynamic history of the rise of the novel: categorial instability = instabilityor
transformationof categories relative to the way truth/reality is represented in the novel (Henry
Fieldings Joseph Andrews)
Romance idealism - the genre of the romance - depends on received authorities and a priori
traditions <challenged and refuted by:
Nave empiricism = the genre of the true history - the convention of the claim to historicity,
author as humble recorder of reality (E.g. Defoe pretends to be only the editor of authentic
documents whose plain and artless truth is above question <becomes vulnerable to a countercritique:
Extreme skepticism = favors the meta-critical act, i.e. the meta-text and self-reflexive irony). In
refuting its empiricist progenitor, it recapitulates some features of the romance idealism which it
is equally committed to opposing (E.g. Swift, Fielding, Sterne: they subvert the claim to
historicity by carrying it to absurdity)
Examples of extreme skepticism
Swift: overloaded realism (too many details) used to describe improbable worlds
Fielding: ironic use of the romance genre (the mock-heroic); digressions (interpolated texts);
explicit metatext (Preface and opening chapters of each book); the mixed tone of the Preface
(half serious, half ironic)
Sterne: thoroughgoing deconstruction of the previous novelistic conventions