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The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740

File:The Origins of the English Novel.jpg Cover of the first edition
Author	Michael McKeon
Language	English
Subject	Literary criticism
Publisher	The Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date	1987
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print
ISBN	0-8018-3291-8

The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 is a 1987 book by literary critic Michael McKeon.

Overview

Part I. Questions of Truth
Chapter 1. The Destabilization of Generic Categories
Chapter 2. The Evidence of the Senses: Secularization and Epistemological Crisis
Chapter 3. Histories of the Individual
Part II. Questions of Virtue
Chapter 4. The Destabilization of Social Categories
Chapter 5. Absolutism and Capitalistic Ideology: The Volatility of Reform
Chapter 6. Stories of Virtue
Part III. The Dialectical Constitution of the Novel
Chapter 7. Romance Transformations (I): Cervantes and the Disenchantment of the World
Chapter 8. Romance Transformations (II): Bunyan and the Literalization of Allegory
Chapter 9. Parables of the Younger Son (I): Defoe and the Naturalization of Desire
Chapter 10. Parables of the Younger Son (II): Swift and the Containment of Desire
Chapter 11. The Institutionalization of Conflict (I): Richardson and the Domestication of Service
Chapter 12. The Institutionalization of Conflict (II): Fielding and the Instrumentality of Belief

Reception

The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 was widely reviewed and received consistently high praise in academic journals.

Arthur Ferguson, reviewing in The American Historical Review wrote: "It is impossible, in a brief review, to do justice to this book. It is not easy reading but, despite occasional patches of obscurity and a style at times clogged by abstractions, it is essential reading for those interested in the rise of the novel and in genre theory and worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the more general epistemological and social crises of early modern history."

Gerald Gillespie, writing in Comparative Literature, observed that "Professor McKeon proves, in any event, that it is not necessary for literary history to be "new" in any trite sense of fashion in order to be engaging and illuminating." Gillespie also stated that the book would be of interest to a range of scholars: "McKeon's book elaborates relevant background for scholars who are concerned with certain major questions in later Western fiction—e.g., with romantic problematics of the autonomy of the self, with Symbolist abandonment of the self for the aesthetic object, with Postmodernist deconstruction of identity, etc. By making a major contribution to appreciation of the impact of British literary development on the truth status of history prior to Romanticism, this book will also be attractive reading for social scientists."

John Kucich in Criticism applauded McKeon's "epic aspirations", stating that the book

seeks to be nothing less than a comprehensive revisionary account of the novel's beginnings, using a dialectical theory of genre to supercede generic models that are either statically archetypal (Frye) or simplistically evolutionary (Auerbach, Watt). The revisions this makes possible are not minor. Besides rejecting traditional assumptions, largely derived from Watt, that the novel can be defined aesthetically in terms of its "formal realism" and ideologically through its claims on a rising middle-class audience, McKeon also challenges polarized theories that see the novel either as a fully unified generic category, on the one hand, or as a site of ageneric incoherence, on the other. Instead, relying largely (but not exclusively) on Bakhtin, McKeon argues that genre must be understood as a complex historical process, and as the site of dialectical tension caused by particular intellectual and social crises.

H. Porter Abbott, writing in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, praised the "architectonic brilliance" of The Origins of the English Novel: "But let the final stress fall not on the beauty of his design but on the significance of his contribution. Like Watt before him, McKeon has given us two things: a historical field and a model for the study of genre."

Maximillian E. Novak in The Modern Language Review said that McKeon's book stands as "a reminder that in the fragmented critical environment of our time, we are more likely to live with a variety of accounts of a literary phenomenon than with any satisfying single explanation. Michael McKeon's book is a learned and often brilliant account of its subject, but it is also difficult and, at times, quirky.... the real achievement of Michael McKeon's book lies in its attempt to join the historical and the literary in a single package for the discussion of fiction.... if his readings of individual works may falter, he has nevertheless raised the level of discussion on a problem in literary history which is all the more fascinating because it does not seem open to an entirely satisfactory solution."

Jane Tylus, reviewing the book in Renaissance Quarterly, compared McKeon's book to Ian Watt's classic study, The Rise of the Novel:

If Watt wrote of a gentry confident in its claims to philosophical empiricism and individualism and a novel that moved steadily from Defoe to Richardson's formal realism and Fielding's modern epic, McKeon gives us a portrait of a beleaguered, poorly defined group grappling with social and epistemological chaos and blindly obeying "two antithetical tendencies: to imitate and become absorbed within the aristocracy, and to criticize and supplant not only aristocracy but status orientation itself." Not surprisingly, this latter view leads to a theory of the novel which is at once more supple and complicated (at times unnecessarily so) than Watt's.

Tylus went on to praise McKeon's "unflinching ability to recognize and explore cultural contradictions, and his insistence that the novel emerges to give form 'to the fluidity of crisis' ... one might say that the critical acuity that the novel comes to manifest and engage becomes the model for McKeon's own work...."

J. Paul Hunter in Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 wrote that "the vast learning and solid sense in Origins will pay off for readers in generations to come regardless of new discoveries and directions. No one else could have written this book in 1987, and no one else could write it even now."

John E. Loftis, reviewing the book in Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature stated that "McKeon's approach is fervently historical, but he does not define the novel in this traditional way. His Marxist readings work equally well with pre-novelistic narratives and novels, implying that the novel is not so much a distinctive new literary form as just a narrative variant. If McKeon has not "defined" the novel as a new genre, however, he has told us a great deal about its (and its predecessor narratives') social, historical nature. The Origins of the English Novel makes an important contribution to our understanding of the dominant narrative form of the modern world."

Merritt Mosely, writing in The Sewanee Review observed that "[t]his book's most impressive features are its learnedness, the wide reading on which it is so solidly based, and its detailed argument. Unlike critics who disdain to anchor their generalizations in particulars, perhaps fearing that to do so would be "humanist," McKeon makes cultural and literary claims answerable to texts. He never plods. And he provides reasons for what he says."

Brian McCrea in South Atlantic Review found both strengths and weaknesses in McKeon's book: "The quality of his materials is of too high a level to allow us to do other than to give praise and thanks for this book. If only for being the first critic to admit and work through the Watt/Frye dichotomy, he assumes an important place in the study of prose fiction. But his book finally does labor under a serious and troubling disproportionateness. The weak almost cursory readings of Richardson and Fielding bring into question the use (not the quality) of the dense pre-history."

John Richetti, reviewing the book in Studies in the Novel, wrote: "Literary history cast in the high heroic mold, 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. His study is conceived and consistently executed, without compromise or apology, at the highest, most difficult pitch of historical generality."

H. T. Dickinson, writing in The English Historical Review, saw the book as a worthy successor to Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel: "For many years Ian Watt's classic work, The Rise of the Novel, has been unchallenged. Aware of the virtues of this study, but also conscious of its limitations, Michael McKeon has produced a fresh, original and ambitious thesis on The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-I740. He locates the genesis of the novel in the great upheavals of the Reformation, secularization and social change that transformed Europe between the sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries."

William B. Warner, writing in Diacritics, had misgivings about McKeon's work: "The allure and conceptual authority of McKeon's realist literary history depends upon an uncritical acceptance of the representational means he uses to stage the novel's origin.... If the plurality of the novel's origins are understood in a more fundamental and irreducible sense than the premises of McKeon's literary history allow, then one would be justified in retitling McKeon's text A (Realist) Literary History of the Origins of the English Novel: 1600-1740, As It Can Be Published in 1987."

Eric Rothstein writing in Eighteenth-Century Studies praised the book: "Lengthy, dry, and dense it may be, but The Origins of the English Novel is a study of outstanding importance, the sort of study that makes publisher's blurbs honest. It should be of deep interest to anyone inquiring into the period covered, the history of the novel, theories of generic change, or ways of conceiving of literature as an instrumentality of culture."

See also

• Text

Sources

• Abbott, H. Porter (January 1989). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 88 (1). University of Illinois Press: 99–102. JSTOR 27710114.
• Dickinson, H. T. (April 1990). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". The English Historical Review. 105 (415). Oxford University Press: 480–481. doi:10.1093/ehr/CV.CCCCXV.480. JSTOR 570930.
• Ferguson, Arthur (February 1989). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". The American Historical Review. 94 (1). Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association: 131–132. doi:10.2307/1862124. JSTOR 1862124.
• Gillespie, Gerald (Summer 1988). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". Comparative Literature. 40 (3). Duke University on behalf of the University of Oregon: 290–293. doi:10.2307/1771026. JSTOR 1771026.
• Hunter, J. Paul (Fall 2003). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, Fifteenth Anniversary Edition by Michael McKeon". Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture. 27 (2). University of Maryland: 61–68. JSTOR 43293742.
• Kucich, John (Fall 1987). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600—1740 by Michael McKeon; The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790—1832 by Jon P. Klancher". Criticism. 29 (4). Wayne State University Press: 527–532. JSTOR 23110510.
• Loftis, John E. (1988). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. 42 (1/2): 89–90. doi:10.2307/1347448. JSTOR 1347448.
• McCrea, Brian (May 1990). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". South Atlantic Review. 55 (2). South Atlantic Modern Language Association: 136–139. doi:10.2307/3200267. JSTOR 3200267.
• Mosely, Merritt (Fall 1990). "Behind the Early English Novel (review of Daniel Defoe: Ambition & Innovation by Paula R. Backscheider; God's Plot and Man's Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding by Leopold Damrosch; The Novels and Journals of Fanny Burney by D. D. Devlin; Jane Austen's Art of Memory by Jocelyn Harris; Samuel Richardson by Jocelyn Harris; The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon; The Conversation of the Sexes: Seduction and Equality in Selected Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Texts by Roy Roussel; Scepticism, Society and the Eighteenth Century Novel by Eve Tavor; Henry Fielding by Simon Varey)". The Sewanee Review. 98 (4). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 682–689. JSTOR 27546282.
• Novak, Maximillian (April 1989). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". The Modern Language Review. 84 (2). Modern Humanities Research Association: 440–442. doi:10.2307/3731589. JSTOR 3731589.
• Richetti, John (Fall 1988). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". Studies in the Novel. 20 (3). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 351–354. JSTOR 29532590.
• Rothstein, Eric (Winter 1987–1988). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". Eighteenth-Century Studies. 21 (2). The Johns Hopkins University Press sponsored by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies: 228–231. doi:10.2307/2739106. JSTOR 2739106.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• Sanders, Mary (Winter 1988). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". Style. 22 (4: Counterstances). Penn State University Press: 688–691. JSTOR 42945751.
• Tylus, Jane (Spring 1989). "Review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 by Michael McKeon". Renaissance Quarterly. 42 (1). The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America: 156–159. doi:10.2307/2861945. JSTOR 2861945.
• Warner, William (Spring 1989). "Realist Literary History: McKeon's New Origins of the Novel (review of The Origins of the English Novel, 1600 - 1740 by Michael McKeon". Diacritics. 19 (1). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 62–81. doi:10.2307/465289. JSTOR 465289.