Three Articles on Watt

The three articles I chose to read out of the Project Muse Journal Eighteenth Century Fiction Special Edition Issue (January-April 2000) were Ian Watt’s “Flat Footed and Fly-Blown: The Realities of Realism,” Max Byrd’s “Two or Three Things I Know about Setting,” and Robert B. Alter’s “A Question of Beginnings.” Today’s post will briefly highlight a few points I found particularly interesting.   

Reading Ian Watt’s 1978 speech "Flat Footed and Fly-Blown: The Realities of Realism” delivered to Stanford University struck me with epiphanies in terms of both practicality as well as critical thought. On a simple level, the earlier parts of his speech illustrated the importance of perspective when putting together a big body of work. In our class, we have had long discussions about Watt’s work, and whether literary criticism agrees or not with his thesis in The Rise of the Novel, it has become evident that his work remains highly influential in eighteenth century literary studies. Yet, in his talk, he illustrates the importance of putting a work aside upon initial completion, and navigating through various influences upon revisiting it. He acknowledges through case in point with R of N, and  his influence by Theodore Adorno (I read parts of Dialectic of Enlightenment in my critical theory course).

Yet more than practical techniques of producing thoughtful work, what struck me as particularly surprising was the simplicity of his argument—to which I agree but never thought any one of his intellectual level would openly acknowledge. That is, Watt basically argues that literary critical theory, what essentiallly passes for philosophy, has become practically regarded as superior to the literature itself. He notes, “It assumes that literature, like the Platonic forms, is not visible to the naked eye, and that we need special equipment to see it. But unlike the mysteries or metatechniques,…the literary work is really there, and needs only our own experience of life and language for us to be able to decipher its meaning” (162). Criticism is certainly helpful, and gives us the tools by which we can dilate a text. Yet, what Watt felt in 1978 of the critical world, is what I still feel ever strongly today. In an effort to make the literary field more scientific, there is an immense amount of pressure on upcoming scholars to holistically accept and apply these literally critical thoughts to their arguments; in fact, it is to only argue such critical terms. Sometimes, it sucks the life out of what the original purpose of studying literature is about—and as Ian Watt notes its for the “love of literature” (166) and the ways in which we can understand the world around us. I think teachers of literature should be cautious not to put criticism in the front of literature, but rather a tool by which we can engage and work with the material at hand.

Watt notes that maintaining the importance of the literature itself while performing a critical trace of the eighteenth century novel in Rise of the Novel did not go unacknowledged by many of his readers.  In fact, Max Byrd in “Two or Three Things I Know About Setting” opens up his essay by noting Watt’s effectiveness in staying true to the text which he examines. He notes, “I like especially the fact that, for all its impressive historical and sociological learning, The Rise of the Novel is a highly literary book, by which I mean that is chiefly concerned with matters such as plot and character…” (186). His particular interest from Watt’s book involves his examination of “space” in setting, to which he uses literature to prove his progression through novel history. Byrd uses Robinson Crusoe to teach imperative aspects (particularly setting) dealing with the rise of the novel (no, not the book) as well. The critical point that strikes me in Byrd’s work is the importance of using literature itself to examine these historical progressions of space and time rather than primary criticism as a necessary means to approach these works.

Along the lines of literary investigation, in “A Question of Beginnings,” Robert Alter discusses the short falls in Watt’s work that we have already visited in our seminar thus far. The most prominent argument holding that Watt misses a lot of unpredictability of the genre that was going on in the eighteenth century in his teleological approach to tracing a central rise in the novel. While I have not read Watt’s work, Alter’s piece was interesting because he demonstrates the timelessness of his argument despite critical scholarship; he illustrates why, despite popular critics of today, Watt’s thesis is still among the most studied and influential pieces of scholarship on the eighteenth century novel. What Alter argues is an essential component which can’t be overlooked in Watt’s work is that the novel enables the reader to be “in contact…with the raw materials of life as they are momentarily reflected in the minds of protagonists” (225). Alter illustrates how two works (Lolita and If on A Winters Night A Traveler) unrelated to Watt’s thesis demonstrate the novel genre’s universal characteristics of interiority that Watt names. It is an insightful look, at the least, of Watt’s influential thesis, which seems to be mainly discussed in terms of what it lacks rather than what it illuminates. Cooper’s presentation did a fair job maintaining this balance, and Alter’s articles reinforced those notions on the novel’s function for me.

The articles all engaged in a critical conversation about Watt’s work in The Rise of the Novel, and while I only read three of many articles in the Project Muse special issue, I am curious to know what other classmates read, and if they, too, have touched upon similar aspects.