An Introduction To The English Novel: Volume One To George Eliot

n Introduction to THE ENGLISH NOVEL z frnold Kettle Mentor Lecturer in English Literature, The University of Leeds VOLUME ONE DEFOE TO GEORGE ELIOT HARPER TORCHBOOKS The Academy Library HARPER BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH NOVEL Vol I Defoe to George Eliot Printed in the United States of America This book was first published in 1951 in the English Literature division, edited by Basil Willey, of the Hutchinson University Library It is reprinted by arrangement with Hutchinson Company Limited, London First HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1960 CONTENTS Preface 7 PART I INTRODUCTORY I Life and Pattern u ii Realism and Romance 27 PART Ii THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY I Introduction 41 ii The Moral Fable 42 in Defoe and the Picaresque Tradition 55 iv Richardson, Fielding, Sterne 63 PART III THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO GEORGE ELIOT I Introduction 87 ii Jane Austen Emma 90 m Scott The Heart of Midlothian 105 iv Dickens Oliver Twist 123 v Emily Bronte Wuthering Height 139 vi Thackeray Vanity Fair 156 vii George Eliot Middlemarch 171 Notes and References 191 Reading List 194 Index 197 PREFACE THE purpose of this book and its successor which will bring the story up to the present day is not to attempt a history of the English Novel. But because the novel, like every other literary form, is a product of history, I have tried, in the first two Parts, to indicate something of the historical development of fiction and to face if not to answer satisfactorily the essential questions why did the novel arise at all, and why should it have arisen when it did The third part of the book makes even less claim to exhaustiveness. I have taken nine well-known nineteenth century novels of which six are included in the present volume and tried to bring out in analysis certain critical questions which emerge from a study of each. Three reasons in particular have led me to adopt this method i the field, by the nineteenth century, has become so wide that an exhaustive treatment would be in any event impossible, ii novels tend to be rather long and for any course of study in this subject it is useful to concentrate on a reading list that is both short and accessible, and iii critics of the novel appear to have shirked, with a few honourable exceptions, the business of analysis and of disciplined critical evaluation. Although I would not for a moment claim to have said the last word about any of the books treated here I have consistently tried to get to the heart of each novel, to pose the questions what kind of a novel is this What is it about It is not enough to consider a novel, any more than a poem or a play, simply in terms of plot-construction and characters. We have to see each novel whole before we can attempt to assess the parts or even to decide the criteria relevant to our judgments. Of course the choice of my novels is somewhat arbitrary. I do not claim that they are the nine best nineteenth-century 8 PREFACE novels. I have left out plenty of books I would have liked to have included and I feel a particular pang in having represented Dickens, the greatest of the English novelists, by a book which is by no stretch of the imagination his best, though I believe it is underrated. My only claim for my chosen books is that they are all good novels though not equally good, all readily accessible, and that they happen to raise a variety of critical problems which have a general interest and significance. The original plan of this book meant stopping, with Conrad, at the beginning of the present century. And yet to leave off there was clearly unsatisfactory. Everything would be left in the air to raise and yet not to attempt to answer any of the problems of our own contemporary fiction would seem irritating and somewhat cowardly. And so it was decided to bring the whole survey it should not really be given so portentous a name up to date and to divide it into two volumes. The present volume ends with Middlemarch...