Trabalho apresentado no curso de Literatura Caribenha e Teoria do Romance, mestrado em Português, University of California, Berkeley, 2005, prof Richard Rosa.

Ian Watt opens his book, The Rise of the Novel, accepting the traditional assertion that the novel began with Defoe, Richardson and Fielding:

If we assume, as is commonly done, that it is [that the novel is a new literary form], and that it was begun by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, how does it differ from the prose fiction of the past, from that of Greece, for example, or that of the Middle Ages, or of seventeenth-century France? (9)

As he proposes to undertake a working definition of the novel, his stepping stone is the unproven statement above. Notice how he uses the word "previous". Watt assumes that the novel is whatever it was that Defoe, Richardson and Fielding did and sets out to define novel so as to exclude whatever came before and include whatever came afterwards:

For this investigation our first need is a working definition of the characteristics of the novel - a definition sufficiently narrow to exclude previous types of narrative and yet broad enough to apply to whatever is usually put in the novel category. (9)

[Historians of the novel] have seen "realism" as the defining characteristic that differentiates the work of the early eighteenth-century novelists from previous fiction. (10) (...) [The novel] surely attempts to portray all the varieties of human experience, and not merely those suited to one particular literary perspective: the novel's realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents, but in the way it presents it. (11)

The novel is the form of literature which most fully reflects this individualist and innovating reorientation. Previous literary forms had reflected the general tendency of their cultures to make conformity to traditional practice the major test of truth: the plots of classical and renaissance epic, for example, were based on past history or fable, and the merits of the author's treatment were judged largely according to a view of literary decorum derived from the accepted models in the genre. This literary traditionalism was first and most fully challenged by the novel, whose primary criterion was truth to individual experience - individual experience which is always unique and therefore new. The novel is thus the logical literary vehicle of a culture which, in the last few centuries, has set an unprecedented value on originality, on the novel; and is therefore well named. (13) (...) Defoe and Richardson were the first writers in our literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legend, or previous literature. In this, they differ from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, for instance, who, like the writers of Greece and Rome, habitually used traditional plots. (14)

Once he takes care of these theoretical problems, Watt proceeds to write a delightful and insightful book. But I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth.

The assertion that the novel began with Defoe, Fielding and Richardson was never sufficiently proven. In fact, it was never proven at all: it was given as a premise. A broad theory of "the novel as a work of original realism" was then carefully built around it, as if not to disturb its shaky foundations. Several other major works, such as McKeon, also take this definition for granted.

Undertaking to tame something as wild as the novel within the confines of a definition is a complex enterprise and I appreciate Watt's attempt. But some questions beg themselves to be asked.

For example, take Apuleius' The Golden Ass, from 2nd Century Greece. Is it a novel? Watt would say The Golden Ass makes no attempt to depict reality as it is and, moreover, probably makes use of traditional folk tales. But that is a stretch. The Golden Ass is studied in History classes for its unsurpassed depiction of the Greek lower classes day-to-day life (a theme much forgotten by other classical writers) and there is no way for us to ascertain that Apuleius did not actually create all his characters' adventures.

But maybe Apuleius is going too far. Why not Don Quixote, from early 17th Century Spain? Many also hail the Quixote as the world's first novel. In fact, as far as unsupported statements go, I have heard this one more often than that the novel began with Defoe, Fielding and Richardson.

There are multiple possible objections, of course. The Quixote makes no attempt at realism, as defined by Watt, and it has a skimpy original plot. Rather, it is at the same time a parody of an agonizing genre and also an episodic book, composed of many quasi-independent folk tales.

What makes Watt's definition of novel untenable is his intention of both excluding everyone before and including everyone after Defoe, Fielding and Richardson.

If we exclude the Quixote for its episodic quality, we would also have to exclude such recent novels as Elizabeth Costello, by Nobel-winning author J. M. Coetzee. Although unanimously referred to as a novel, the various episodes of Elizabeth Costello are even more independent than the Quixote's.

Or if we exclude the Quixote for being a parody, we would also have to exclude many other novels that are not absolutely original or that depend on previous works of literature for its satirical or allegorical purposes. Are Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and Cunningham's The Hours not novels?

From a 21st Century perspective, I see precious little difference between Sterne's Tristam Shandy and Don Quixote in this respect. Watt itself, near the end of his book, states that Shandy is more a parody of a novel than a novel itself. (291)

There is something seriously arbitrary with a definition of novel that includes Sterne while excluding Cervantes.

If we apply the criterion of realism to exclude Don Quixote and The Golden Ass, what would happen to all the other absolutely unrealistic works of fiction produced ever since, specially some of the most experimental 20th Century works, such as the anti-novels, the surrealists, the nouvelle vague, the nouveau roman, etc? Are not the prose equivalents of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Ionesco's The Bald Soprano novels? If Burrough's Naked Lunch is a novel, then why not Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantaguel?

Although I can even anticipate (and reject) most of the objections that could be made against the works mentioned above, there was one particular 17th Century book that I felt just could not be excluded from the novel canon. How can Lafayette's The Princess of Clèves not be a novel? To my surprise, as I was thinking that, Watt specifically mentions the book:

In France, the classical critical outlook, with its emphasis on elegance and concision, were not fully challenged until the Romanticism. It is perhaps partly for this reason that French fiction from La Princesse de Clèves to Les Liasons Dangereuses stands outside the main tradition of the novel. For all its psychological penetration and literary skill, we feel it is too stylish to be authentic. In this Madame de La Fayette and Choderlos de Laclos were polar opposites of Defoe and Richardson, whose very diffusiveness tends to act as a guarantee of the authenticity of their report. (30)

What is often felt as the formlessness of the novel, as compared, say, with tragedy or the ode, probably follows from this: the poverty of the novel's formal convention would seem to be the price it must pay for its realism. (13)

But if "emphasis on elegance and concision" are criteria to exclude a work from the novel canon, does that mean that Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea are not novels?

Watt hails Joyce's Ulysses as the "climax of the novel's development" (296), but if being "too stylish to be authentic" should exclude a work from the novel genre, then Ulysses would be the very first book to go.

Worse than arbitrary, there is something seriously flawed with a definition of novel that admittedly does not include The Princess of Clèves.

* * *

Trabalho apresentado para a aula de Teoria do Romance e Literatura Caribenha. O professor não queria um trabalho formal mas somente um "response paper", uma reação a algum dos autores lidos.

Pensei muito em traduzir mas, sério, meu tempo está escasseando dramaticamente. Se você não lê inglês, minhas desculpas. Desça a tela e vai ter algo legal pra você mais embaixo.

Querem apostar como vai ter algum idiota com complexo de inferioridade dizendo que escrevi o post só pra me gabar de quantos livros já li?

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Postada no blog em dezembro de 2005

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