The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740

by Michael McKeon

Overview

“This may well be the most important study of the development of prose fiction in England since Ian Watt’s classic Rise of the Novel, on which it builds.” —Library Journal

The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, combines historical analysis and readings of extraordinarily diverse texts to reconceive the foundations of the dominant genre of the modern era. Now, on the fifteenth anniversary of its initial publication, The Origins of the English Novel stands as essential reading. The anniversary edition features a new introduction in which the author reflects on the considerable response and commentary the book has attracted since its publication by describing dialectical method and by applying it to early modern notions of gender.

Challenging prevailing theories that tie the origins of the novel to the ascendancy of “realism” and the “middle class,” McKeon argues that this new genre arose in response to the profound instability of literary and social categories. Between 1600 and 1740, momentous changes took place in European attitudes toward truth in narrative and toward virtue in the individual and the social order. The novel emerged, McKeon contends, as a cultural instrument designed to engage the epistemological and social crises of the age.

“This book is a formidable attempt to articulate issues of almost imponderable centrality for modern life and literature. McKeon proposes with quite breathtaking ambition and considerable intellectual flourish to redefine the novel’s key role in those immense cultural transformations that produce the modern world.” —Studies in the Novel

“A magisterial work of history and analysis.” —Arts and Letters

“A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come.” —The New York Review of Books

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801877995
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	04/27/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	773
Sales rank:	914,439
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael McKeon is a professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University. He is the author of The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge, and the editor of Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach.

Table of Contents

Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Fifteenth Anniversary Edition
Introduction: Dialectical Method in Literary History

PART I QUESTIONS OF TRUTH
Chapter One: The Destabilization of Generic Categories
Chapter Two: The Evidence of the Senses: Secularization and Epistemological Crisis
Chapter Three: Histories of the Individual

PART II QUESTIONS OF VIRTUE
Chapter Four: The Destabilization of Social Categories
Chapter Five: Absolutism and Capitalist Ideology: The Volatility of Reform
Chapter Six: Stories of Virtue

PART III THE DIALECTICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE NOVEL
Chapter Seven: Romance Transformations (I) : Cervantes and the Disenchantment of the World
Chapter Eight: Romance Transformations (II) : Bunyan and Literalization of Allegory
Chapter Nine: Parables of the Younger Son (I) : Defoe and the Naturalization of Desire
Chapter Ten: Parables of the Younger Son (II) : Swift and the Containment of Desire
Chapter Eleven: The Institutionalization of Conflict (I) : Richardson and the Domestication of Service
Chapter Twelve: The Institutionalization of Conflict (II) : Fielding and the Instrumentality of Belief

Conclusion
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book is a formidable attempt to articulate issues of almost imponderable centrality for modern life and literature. McKeon proposes with quite breathtaking ambition and considerable intellectual flourish to redefine the novel's key role in those immense cultural transformations that produce the modern world.

Studies in the Novel

It is one of the most rigorous and penetrating books I have read-and one of the most widely researched, in its coverage of texts, theory, and historical developments.

London Review of Books

A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come.

New York Review of Books

A magisterial work of history and analysis.

Arts and Letters

A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come.
— New York Review of Books

Christopher Hill

One of the most rigorous and penetrating books I have read—and one of the most widely researched, in its coverage of texts, theory, and historical developments. London Review of Books

Vincent Newey

This may well be the most important study of the development of prose fiction in England since Ian Watt's classic, Rise of the Novel (1957), on which it builds. Like Watt's study, it examines philosophical changes ('Questions of Truth') and social-cultural changes ('Questions of Virtue') in the early modern period to conclude that the novel 'emerged in early modern England as a new literary fiction designed to engage the social and ethical problems the established literary fictions could no longer mediate.' It also offers provocative readings of several 17th- and 18th-century works. The Marxist/deconstructionist language will be difficult for undergraduates, but the astute philosophical, cultural, historical, and literary observations will fascinate and enlighten any scholar of the early modern period. -- Joseph Rosenblum, English Dept., Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Library Journal

A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come. -- New York Review of Books

Christopher Hill

The last two decades have been turbulent ones for the study of the novel, and most of the waves have been created by Michael McKeon . . . The fifteenth anniversary edition . . . offers the opportunity to reflect on McKeon's extraordinary contribution to studies of the novel . . . Because the work is so careful and the thinking so precise, I find the story he tells just as compelling now as in the 1980s and, if anything, more satisfying in its comprehension of issues and weaving them into a coherent whole.
—J. Paul Hunter, Restoration

This book is a formidable attempt to articulate issues of almost imponderable centrality for modern life and literature. McKeon proposes with quite breathtaking ambition and considerable intellectual flourish to redefine the novel's key role in those immense cultural transformations that produce the modern world.
—Studies in the Novel

A magisterial work of history and analysis.
—Arts and Letters

One of the most rigorous and penetrating books I have read—and one of the most widely researched in its coverage of texts, theory, and historical developments.
—London Review of Books

A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come.
—Christopher Hill, New York Review of Books

From the Publisher

A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come.

New York Review of Books - Christopher Hill

The last two decades have been turbulent ones for the study of the novel, and most of the waves have been created by Michael McKeon . . . The fifteenth anniversary edition . . . offers the opportunity to reflect on McKeon's extraordinary contribution to studies of the novel . . . Because the work is so careful and the thinking so precise, I find the story he tells just as compelling now as in the 1980s and, if anything, more satisfying in its comprehension of issues and weaving them into a coherent whole.

Restoration - J. Paul Hunter

The last two decades have been turbulent ones for the study of the novel, and most of the waves have been created by Michael McKeon... The fifteenth anniversary edition... offers the opportunity to reflect on McKeon's extraordinary contribution to studies of the novel... Because the work is so careful and the thinking so precise, I find the story he tells just as compelling now as in the 1980s and, if anything, more satisfying in its comprehension of issues and weaving them into a coherent whole.

— J. Paul Hunter

Restoration