Watt Part 2

The link above has nothing to do with Ian Watt, novels, or the 18th Century. It does, however, take you to the online edition of The Bloody Theatre, or, the Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, Who Baptized Only Upon Confession of Faith, and Who Suffered and Died for the Testimony of Jesus, Their Saviour, From the Time of Christ to the Year A.D. 1660 Complied Ffrom Various Authentic Chronicles, Memorials, and Testimonies. Nice title.

     As for Watt: I have a few thoughts which do not go together, and probably never will. First, I can't help but notice how similiar his argument is to that of Kenneth Burke. Both of them find that "both the philosophical and the literary innovations must be seen as parallel manifestations of larger change" (Watt 31)--For "manifestations," insert "symptoms" and you have Burke's idea of literature as arising from a particular Scene, as a "stylized and strategic response" to that scene. What Burke would emphasize about ALL writing ("poetry" he says) is that it is rhetorical in that it tries to create identifications and identity. When Watt talks about "the various technical characteristics" of the novel, of the "stylistic [classical] tradition of fiction" that the novel does not have, of the novel's "break [...] with the accepted canons of prose style" (27-29), he is forgetting that those very stylistic changes are rhetorical changes. If literature is a stylized response, a change in style is a change in argument. It is not enough to simply state that "the" novel breaks with traditional style; we must now identify that style and what it does. Style, as much as content, determines reception and Attitude changes in the audience.

     Which is why it is important to rethink Watt's statement on the novel's structure: "What is often felt as the formlessness of the novel, as compared, say, with tragedy or the ode, probably follows from this: the poverty of the novel's formal conventions would seem to the the price it must pay for its realism" (13). There are MANY problems with this statement. To begin with, let me point to all of the economics metaphors Watt uses: "poverty," "price to pay," later, "cost of," etc. While I realize that writing is a commodity, the language of impovershment seems inappropriate for some reason--I guess I'll work that out later.

      More importantly, however, is his claim that the novel does not quite meet the standards of tragedy. While the novel form is "freer" in a sense, over time it has become formalized. In fact, if I remember correctly, some of the Formalists claimed that there is little difference between Greek and novel plot lines. There is more variance allowed, but that variance is still held to conventions. In fact, as I have argued to death, dystopian and utopian novels have a fairly fixed structure that has only begun to be experimented with. There are stock characters, predictable tragic heroes, journeys home, etc. I'm not sure why Watt thinks there is no form to the novel: Pamela and Moll Flanders are both about the struggles of a pretty girl and her ability to work through those struggles using her wits (Moll being a phystical actor, Pamela working symbolically). Both meet some older woman who is corrupt and helps them see inside the cagey world of working women. Both learn lessons about deception. They may take different approaches, but both end up in the same damn place: at home, with a husband and a child, happily ever after. In the end, the women reading the novel are no different than Moll or Pamela: they do not need to go out and experience this themselves because Moll and Pam have shown that no matter what we do, we all end up alike. And that's a comfort. And it's a form. How else could we have a tragic novel?

Take that.

      The epistilary form of Pamela (and lots of others) lends itself to Kenneth Burke's idea of identification and consubstantiality. The best rhetoric--the only rhetoric--depends on the rhetor's ability to create an identification between himself and his audience. Because writing lacks the immediacy of speech (shut up Derria), because the speaker is absent, identification must be got by other means than mere presence and proximity. The temporal realism of Pamela allows us to move with her (as Richardson's mouthpiece), to be connected to her in time, if not space. While it makes for strange reading if you think about it too hard, the temporal proximity makes up for the lack of action. Pamela is about words, about argumentation, about a woman's ability to speak when silenced, symbolically act when unable to effect change elsewhere. Because of this, not much "happens," but due to the presence the text purports, we do not feel the drag of mere conversation between made up people. It's like a soap opera (or Battlestar Galactica, or InuYasha)--the speech matters only because we are already connected to the speakers.

      Why is Watt's framework still present after nearly 50 years? Why do we still feel the need to at least read it, if not address it? Even I, not knowing anything about the field, felt drawn to his book. First, I think, he is the first person to take the novel seriously, as a work of art. Secondly, he, like Burke, seems to be ahead of his time, in attributing cultural factors to the novel's rise (whether or not he got it right doesn't matter to me as much as the fact that he does not give the Romantic argument of "spontaneous overflow of emotion" for invention). His argument is difficult to breach; he argues that causality as a topoi is ever present in the novel, and this is the very topoi he uses (novels were caused by X, Y, Z). If you accept one part of his argument, you feel compelled by the rest. In linking philosophy to literature, he adds to his ethos and logos. His pathos is lacking, but it usually is in this type of writing.

      In the end, however, Watt gives us a starting place, something to hold onto as a master narrative. The Romantic narratives still hold today; we should not be surprised that this one is equally compelling. Watt's text acts as an island to stand on in the ocean of data, the sea of text and context. It is an organizing principle where there were none before. In creating his framework, he has accomplished a monumental, albeit probably incomplete, task: he's managed to give us a leg to stand on. To not address that leg as we add others would be to try to build a building from the top down. Even if the newer theories and criticism end up undoing Watt, they must first return to Watt to, as Burke says, return the terms to the molten center, where terms are at play and ideas are indefinite (pun intended).

      As for the Martyrs Mirror: Is it literature? Gerald's language seems to imply that it is, at least, somewhat fictive, somewhat in a "story" mode. That, however, does not literature make, according to Derrida. Burke, however, says that any symbolic performance is "poetry" when it does something, when it responds to something. Which stance shall I take?

What, then, shall we do?