Présentation de l'éditeur
In this influential study, Ian Watt traves the genesis and development of the most popluar of all literay forms, the novel. In his penerating and original readings of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, he investigates the reasons why the three main eighteenth-century novelist wrote in the way they did - a way resulting ultimately in the modern novel of the present day. The rise of the middle classes and of economic individualism, the philosophical innovations of the seventeeth century, complex changes in the social position of women : these are some of the factors underlying an age which produced the authors of ROBINSON CRUSOE, PAMELA and TOM JONES.
Book Description
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 studies: his introduction of sociology and philosophy to traditional criticism.
