Aphra Behn and the Changing Perspectives on Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel
Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel (1957) remains one of the most influential texts in the study of the English novel. However, an increasingly strong case for a revision of both the work itself and the discourse it personifies has been gradually building over the past twenty years. While the initial stages of, first, feminist and, later, post colonial perspectives may have sought only to insert marginalised texts into the existing literary discourse, their long term ramifications are obliging a wider analysis of how we approach the English novel and the manner in which we link it to its surrounding culture. Its exploration reveals the methods with which we trace our histories, what we choose to include and exclude the positions from which we do so. A key to the structure of this discourse lies in the critical fortunes of Aphra Behn, from her feminist ‘rediscovery’ in the early eighties, through the post colonial informed revisions of the early nineties, and into the rising push for the redefinition of literary history. The complications that have surrounded her indicate the merits and failures of the study of the novel, providing avenues for the development of the discourse as a whole.
In approaching such issues one will invariably need to begin with Ian Watt. David Blewett claims that The Rise of the Novel casts a shadow “so long that general studies of the early novel are still written in its shade” (p.141). Its central “realization that the novel’s rise has long been a defining feature of the modern world” (Carnochan, p.184) seems to remain largely unchallenged. On similar terms Michael Seidal argues that ‘Watt’s greater contribution remains his ...
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The roots of the novel extend as far back as the beginning of communication and language because the novel is a compilation of various elements that have evolved over the centuries. The birth of the English novel, however, can be centered on the work of three writers of the 18th century: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754). Various critics have deemed both Defoe and Richardson the father of the English novel, and Fielding is never discussed without comparison to Richardson. The choice of these three authors is not arbitrary; it is based on central elements of the novel that these authors contributed which brought the novel itself into place. Of course, Defoe, Richardson and Fielding added onto styles of the past and writing styles of the period, including moralistic instruction and picaresque stories. Using writing of the time and the literary tradition of the past, Defoe first crafted the English novel while Richardson and Fielding completed its inception.