Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding," written by Ian Watt.

THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

The novel is in nothing so characteristic of our culture as in the way that it reflects this characteristic orientation of modern thought" (Watt 22). This is how Watt defines the novel that he discusses and picks apart in his book. Watt wrote this book in 1957, after studying the 18th century novel for many years. He feels the writing of the three authors he discusses, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding, was influenced by broad changes in their society. To make his point, he says, "Defoe, Richardson and Fielding were no doubt affected by the changes in the reading public of their time; but their works are surely more profoundly conditioned by the new climate of social and moral experience which they and their eighteenth-century readers shared" (Watt 7)....
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