The Development of the Novel

To today's novel reader, with one foot irrevocably planted in the 21st century, reflection on the origin(s) of the novel is considerably more complicated than it was in the earlier part of the 20th century. Questions of origin are also more fraught than they were for postwar critics of the 1950s such as Ian Watt and Richard Chase. As Homer Brown notes, "What is clear is that the linear history of the novel as having an "origin" and "rise," the history we have been brought up on, with its genealogies, lines of descent and influence, family resemblances, is itself a fictional narrative - a kind of novel about the novel." He views the shifting critical responses to such "canonical" authors as Defoe, for example, as an allegory for the shifting definitions of the novel over several centuries. "The Development of the Sources and Documents" aims largely to reflect the historical trajectory of the English language novel, rather than the revisionary history of the transnational novel of which Doody, Lynch and Warner and Rushdie speak. Instead, this collection attempts to reflect the decades, even centuries, of debates about the origin, genre and goals of the novel, granting equal space to both writers and critics over nearly three centuries. The material is divided into sections for easy reference and each piece is prefaced by an explanatory paragraph by the editor explaining its importance. Volume I looks at the origins of the novel from Cervantes to Austen and finishes with a section on the 19th century development in Europe. Volume II concentrates on the 19th century in the English tradition (Scott to James) and ends with 2 sections on the development of the novel in America. Volume III concentrates on the 20th century and is divided into 2 1900-1950 and then from 1950 to the present.

Professor Eleanore McNees teaches in the English Dept in the University of Denver