Sociology 185c Wednesday the 30^th – Ian Watt – The Rise of the Novel

· Big Question: What are the social and technical forces that give rise to the novel?

· What is a novel, (as opposed to earlier forms of literature)?

o Not just emotion, but the “authenticity of it’s presentation” (174) and that authenticity is achieved through a change in at both the direction and scale of the narrative

o SCALE

§ Read long Francis Jeffrey quote on 175

§ “more minutely discriminated time scale’, that is to say everyday events

§ “much less selective attitude towards the choice of details” given to the reader

o DIRECTION

§ “towards the delineation of domestic life and the private experience” (subject matter) read quote, bottom of 175

o “Pamela is indeed the first novel because “Where are we to find a probable human being worked out to the same degree before” – we know her intimately (176)

o What forces influenced Richardson, and all novelists to follow, in giving fiction this subjective and inward basis? 176

§ Formal basis of the narrative, the letter, which reflects “**quote bottom 17

§ Christianity, via Puritanism, focus on inner experience (link to Weber)

§ Secularism, creates a man-centered universe, “individual responsible for their own moral and social values

§ Individualism, “it fostered not only the kind of private ego-centric mental life we find in” the novel, “but also the later stress on the importance of personal relationships”

§ Provided and audience that lived such a life and so cared about such things (177)

§ Urbanization, as the root cause of many of these things, read long quotes on page 178 as to what urbanization does, link to Durkheim

§ Similarly, move to p. 185, long quote on the bottom, urbanization means we really need private personal relationships, and so we need out art (novels) to reflect this as well

§ The first transition, rural to urban

§ Long quote on 179 describing each.

§ Leads to the two most prominent themes of the early novel, quote on 180

o The Second transition

§ The less salutary effects of urbanization lead to the suburbs

§ New bad city, quote top 186

§ Urbane vs suburban, quote 187, and so it is the suburbs that keep alive the new social features that also nurture the novel, “the privacy of the suburb…quote starts bottom 187

§ Quote 190

o Upside and downside of the epistolary form

§ Improbability

§ Authenticity, quote 192, then 193

o Last big social force, technical change, the rise of the printing press

§ Big city leads to print, can’t keep an oral culture alive once we can’t all gather together in one place (Aristotle)

§ Authority of print 8197

§ Illusion, 198 (even more so for movies)

o Consequences of this, “much deeper and unqualified identification between the reader and these characters” 201