Ian Watt - Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism

A key element Watt explores is the decline in importance of the philosophy of classical antiquities, with its various strains of idealistic thought that viewed human experience as composed of universal Platonic "forms" with an innate perfection. Such a view of life and philosophy dominated writers from ancient times through the Renaissance, resulting in classical poetic forms and genres with essentially flat plots and characters (Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin has written that such literature can literally be read front to back, or back to front, with no significant difference in effect). These philosophical beliefs began to be replaced perhaps in the later Renaissance, into the Enlightenment, and, most importantly, in the early 18th century. The importance of rationalist philosophers such as John Locke, Descartes, Spinoza and many others who followed them, and the scientific, social and economic developments of this period began to have ever greater impact, and in place of the older classical idealism, a more realistic, pragmatic, empirical understanding of life and human behavior, which recognized human individuality and conscious experience, began to emerge. This was reflected in the novels of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, who in important ways began to write of unique individual lives and experiences lived in realistic, intersubjective (the term is Husserl's, who did not come along until the 20th century) environments. Watt wrote that the novel form's "primary criterion was truth to individual experience" (13). It is this focus on individual experience that characterizes the novel in Wattian terms. Prose works of a certain length could not necessarily be classified as novels—lengthy prose works had existed since ancient times, but many of these works dealt in the types characteristic of ancient literature. The picaresque novel is an example of such a genre.

A second major trend that Watt studies is the "rise of the reading public" and the growth of professional publishing during this period. Publishers at this time “occupied a strategic position between author and printer, and between both of these and the public” (52-3). The growth of profit concerns impelled publishers to reach out to wider reading publics. In addition the specialization of professions, which narrowed the everyday experiences of this new reading public, created a market for portrayals of a greater array of different classes, peoples, ages, sexes, etc. (writing aimed at, and soon written by, women writers is an important trend of 18th century literature) Such detailed writings of the experiences of different people can be seen in the novels Watt examines, and had rarely been seen before. Watt presents many statistical details in this section of the book in support of his argument, especially since he spent some time.