Watt, Ian (1917-1999)

The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson,and Fielding

Berkeley and Los Angeles

University of California Press

1957

"This direction, of course, is towards the delineation of the domestic life and the private experience of the characters who belong to it: the two go together--we get inside their minds as well as inside their houses."

One of the constituents of the narrative method described by Jeffrey was noted in the first chapter--the more minutely discriminated time-scale, and the much less selective attitude to what should be told the reader, which are characteristic of Richardson's formal realism. But this unselective amplitude of presentation does not alone explain how Richardson enables us to 'slip into the domestic privacy of the characters': we must take account of the direction as well as of the scale of his narrative. This direction, of course, is towards the delineation of the domestic life and the private experience of the characters who belong to it: the two go together--we get inside their minds as well as inside their houses.
(p. 175)

Architecture::Houses

Reading

Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson,and Fielding (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957).

10/10/2011