The Idea of the Novel in Europe, 1600–1800

266 Pages·1979·25.648 MB·English

by  Ioan Williams (auth.)

THE IDEA OF THE NOVEL IN EUROPE, 1600-1800
By the same author
ROBERT BROWNING
SIR WALTER SCOTT ON NOVELISTS AND FICTION
WILLIAM lHACKERAY
NOVEL AND ROMANCE: A DOCUMENTARY RECORD
THE CRITICISM OF HENRY FIELDING
GEORGE MEREDITH: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
THE REALIST NOVEL IN ENGLAND
The Idea of the Novel in
Europe, 1600-1800
lOAN WILLIAMS
© loan Williams 1979
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1979
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1978 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
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Associated companies in Delhi
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Typeset in Great Britain by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Williams, loan
The idea of the novel in Europe, 1600-1800.
1. Fiction -17th century - History and criticism
2. Fiction-18th century-History and criticism
I. Title
809.3'3 PN3491
ISBN 978-1-349-04083-4 ISBN 978-1-349-04081-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04081-0
This book is sold subject
to the standard conditions
of the Net Book Agreement
I Rieni Heledd
Contents
Preface ix
1
THE NOVEL AS ROMANCE: CERVANTES' DON
QUIXOTE 1
El Ingenioso Hidalgo ... (1605) 7
La Segunda Parte ... (1615) 16
2
AFTER CERVANTES: ROMANCE AND REASON IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 26
The New Romance 33
Comic Romance 39
L'Histoire comique de Fran cion (1623) 44
Le Romant comique 56
3
THE FALL OF ROMANCE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF
FRENCH FICTION AFTER 1670 69
History as Fiction; the Theory and Practice of the Abbe de
Saint-Real 77
Beyond the Nouvelle; Actuality and Fiction 83
The Return of Don Quixote 84
Pilleau de Saint Martin 90
Continuation at Two Removes 97
Positively the Last Appearance? 99
Les Illustres francoises (1713) 102
L'Histoire de Gil BIas de Santilane (1715) 118
viii THE IDEA OF THE NOVEL IN EUROPE 1600-1800
4
PROGRESS AND COMPROMISE: THE NOVEL IN
ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 1715-1758 133
Le Sage's 'Further Adventures'; the Failure of Gil Bias 137
The Early Marivaux; Experiments in Modemism, 1712-1715 140
Between Truth and Lie; the Problematic Case of Defoe 146
Enlightenment and Absurdity; Prevost's Le Philosophe anglais 154
La Vie de Marianne: the Novel as Portrait 162
The History of Clarissa Harlowe: the Triumph of Fiction 174
Henry Fielding's 'New Province': Realism and Compromise 185
5
THE AGE OF ROUSSEAU, 1760-1800 201
Between Two Worlds i the Novel in France after 1757 207
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy; Sense and
Sensibility from 1758 220
The Achievement of Goethe 233
Bibliography 242
Index of Names 250
Preface
The Idea of the Novel is neither history nor polemic though it shares
some of the qualities of both. It is designed to add to, and partly to
correct, existing views of the novel's development during the period
from 1600 to 1800, by demonstration rather than by argument. There
are strong tendencies in historical accounts of the novel either to expand
the concept beyond any usefulness as a critical term or to define it too
narrowly, linking its appearance too closely to specific social and
cultural contexts. It is often assumed that the novel developed first in
eighteenth-century England, that its rise was linked to the process by
which distinctively middle-class attitudes and circumstances de-
veloped and that one of its essential qualities is the realistic or critical
spirit associated with them. It is often spoken of as an anti-romantic
form, historically later than romance, which embodies the attitudes of
previously dominant, aristocratic, classes. To some extent, of course,
this view has sound historical basis, nowhere more convincingly
presented than in Ian Watt's justly celebrated Rise of the Novel (1958),
but it seems to me distorted and a serious danger in so far as it is often
made the basis or the excuse for critical judgements of individual novels
and pronouncements about the future of the form.
Of course the novel did go through a revolutionary phase of develop-
ment during the eighteenth century, particularly in England, a develop-
ment which prepared for and even anticipated what happened in the
following century, when it became the dominant literary form through-
out Europe. What happened was essentially a change of focus, which
brought the novel closer to the texture of individual and social experi-
ence and widened its range to include new areas of both. I want to
suggest, however, that this change did not amount to the development
of a new literary form but rather the evolution of an existing one, and
x THE IDEA OF THE NOVEL IN EUROPE 1600-1800
that the development of the novel through the previous two hundred
years in Europe as a whole may be seen as continuous though irregular.
In effect, though it is not part of my primary purpose to do so, my
thesis challenges conventional assumptions about the connection be-
tween the rise of the middle classes and the rise of the novel. This is not
because I doubt the existence of a causal relationship, or series of
relationships, but rather because I feel that the whole business is a great
deal more complex than it is often assumed to be. The key to under-
standing this aspect of history seems to me to lie with Lucien Goldman
rather than Ian Watt. What we need to understand is the relationship
between the framework of values and experiences embodied in indi-
vidual literary works and the multifarious, overlapping systems and
structures of value and experience in contemporary life. Class, as
Goldman has demonstrated beyond dispute, is at all times the most
fundamentally important of these structures and perhaps he is right in
maintaining the traditional Marxist viewpoint that it is to class and its
underlying economic basis that we will have final resort in our attempt
to understand literature. But in the first instance, in so far as we are
interested in the particular dimension of literature, we must start with
the context in which social and cultural values are transformed, re-
flected, or distorted, in individual novels. One of the major factors
which affects this process is the group of ideas, techniques and
standards associated with particular genres. This group, different in its
constituents from time to time, or from place to place, is yet sufficiently
clear in its central principles to be identifiable as such, and it is this
which I refer to when I use the phrase 'The Idea of the Novel'. In itself it
comprises an important structure within which social and moral values
undergo transformation to become the constituent parts of literary
works. Like any other group of ideas, or any other 'structure', of
course, it lacks material embodiment except that which it finds in
individual novels. To study it, and so to understand the way in which
these individual novels have historically been related and remain so, we
must move to and fro between them and from them to the circumstances
in which they acquired their particular being. It is perhaps not un-
reasonable to describe this process as imitating the dialectic which
Marxist critics discover in the process by which all human activity
takes place.
This is why, although the book rests on certain assumptions as to the
nature of the novel as a literary form, I have chosen not to argue them
out in the text. It seems to me that an objective definition of thenovelis
impossible, except in the simplest and most general terms. On the other