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The Modern Novel from a Sociological Perspective: Towards a Strategic Use of the Notion of
Genres
Author(s): Daniel Just
Source:
Journal of Narrative Theory,
Vol. 38, No. 3 (Fall 2008), pp. 378-397
Published by:
Journal of Narrative Theory
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The
Modern
Notion
Novel
Towards
from
a Sociological
Use
Perspective:
of the
a Strategic
of Genres
Daniel Just
In his book Puissances du roman(1942), a textdescribedin its prefaceas
a sociological study of the novel, Roger Caillois examines the link be-
tween the novel and modern society and concludes, with the keenness
characteristic thepoliticallycommitted
of
intellectuals thetime,thatthe
of
typeof socialitythatgives rise to the genre of the novel is fundamentally
As
fragmented. Georg Lukacs and othersbeforehim,also Caillois argues
thatthegenreof thenovel is a symbolicformof representation
closely re-
narrative
lated to a specifictypeof society.The novel, a dominant
genreof
historicalcir-
is,
modernity, accordingto Caillois, a productof particular
cumstancesand a societythatreduces the social aspect of life to the mere
co-existence of individuals. Caillois wonders whetherwe can thinkof a
different
and imagine a social and historicalfullnessthat
typeof narrative
is missingfromboth the novel and the societyin which it emerges.Spec-
could represent fullnessof
the
ulatingabout the ways in which literature
gesture,he denies thatnarratives
undispersedsocialityin an anticipatory
novelisticchannels.Even
could stepout of thedispersivesocialitythrough
thoughthe question of whetherthe novel could eventuallybe broughtto
subscribeto such a programis, as Denis Hollier has more recentlysug-
gested (Hollier 66), never ruled out in Puissances du roman,Caillois re-
so
mainsrather
skepticalabout thepotentialof thenovel to be transformed
NT:
NT:
38.3
©
J Journal Narrative
Theory (Fall2008):378-397.
Copyright2008byJ
of
Journal Narrative
of
Theory.
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The ModemNovel
a
from Sociological
Perspective
379
to
radicallythatit would be able to offeran alternative a bourgeois depic-
tion of monadic individuality.
*
*
*
fixednor au-
the
As withall literary
forms, genreof thenovel is neither
of
tonomous.As Hayden Whitehas put it in an elegantrephrasing Jose Or-
thatman has onlyhistory no essence,
but
tega y Gasset's famous statement
(White 598).
genres,includingthenovel, "lack essence buthave a history"
-
Genres not only have but, at least to some extent,are theirhistory they
evolve and interactwith othergenres and with theirsocial environment.
when theydo
is
However, theyalso disappear.The difficulty to determine
and when they merelymutate.It is this assessment that has become in-
to
century
creasinglyproblematic make in thelast decades of thetwentieth
of
because of an unprecedented
blurring genericboundariesand the flour-
ishingof hybridgenres.Has the novel died? But, then,it was supposed to
have died already many times, with Robbe-Grillet, Joyce, or even
how and why did it
Flaubert. If the novel has been merelytransformed,
-
-
change, and what if anything has remainedof its originalconstitution?
as
If we accept boththe factthatpostcolonial writing, PeterHitchcockhas
recently argued, opposes the generic nature of metropolitan writing,
drive thathelps to justifyimperialism,
thereby
opposing its classificatory
now to apply the notion of
and the fact thatit is, indeed, more difficult
does thatmean the end of genre criticism
forms,
literary
genresto current
as both a historically
and politicallyobsolete methodology?
As with any othergenre,in orderto account for the novel's ultimate
point one must consider its origin and its development.Yet that is pre-
cisely where the problem lies when it comes to the novel. Because of its
the
eclecticism and generic fluidity, novel's starting
point is not
stylistic
easy to locate. On one hand, critics have argued that the novel can be
tracedback to Don Quixote while, on the otherhand, manyhave claimed
,
or
thatas a genreit was notfullyestablisheduntilthelate eighteenth, even
the early nineteenth
century(Robert 11, 231-233). According to Mikhail
to
Bakhtin's widely recognized contribution this issue, the novel origi-
nated in the earlyRenaissance era. Rabelais is Bakhtin'scelebratedexam-
of
time represented multiplicity so-
the
who forthe first
ple of the writer
theirunique perspectiveson theworld undera
cial voices without
merging
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380
J
N
T
single authorialvoice, while Dostoevsky serves as such an exemplarycase
at the other end of the novel's evolution. However appealing Bakhtin's
of
view of the novel as a genre thatembodies the plurality culturalforms
fashionmay be, it neverthe-
and social discourses in a popular-democratic
less proves veryexclusive forthepurposes of examiningthe novel froma
the
as
sociological perspective.In Bakhtin's writings, novel features a no-
tion of such conceptual puritythatonly very few books comply with it,
he
leaving us with a massive residue of all those narratives calls "tradi-
tional novels" that,accordingto his premises,are notreallynovels.
When Ian Wattdecides to situatethe originof the novel at the begin-
he
century, does not necessarilydiscreditthose the-
ning of the eighteenth
further
back in history.
oristswho, like Bakhtin,recognizedits foundation
traitsbut a search for
What guides Watt's inquiryis not a set of stylistic
the momentwhen a specific type of storytelling
gained a pivotal social
The new lit-
role. For Watt,thismomentwas the early eighteenth
century.
one as rad-
of
eraryformcreatedby the English writers thatperiod strikes
qualities and because of its
ically innovativeboth because of its literary
Since the new genrewas capable of recordingthe signifi-
social function.
cant socio-cultural changes of the time, the novel, according to Watt,
but
genre,as one formof artamong others,
emergednot only as a literary
as a privilegedculturalproduct.
Althoughit is truethatall formsof artare
react to, or ignore theirsocial environment,
culturalproductsthatreflect,
the novel, at a particularhistoricalmoment,emergedas a socially indis-
in
As
pensable artifact. England was undergoinga radical transformation
the wake of the industrialrevolution,and as its culture struggledto re-
spond to these changes, society required popular means of representing
the
and symbolizingnew challenges.As Wattconvincingly
demonstrates,
outcome of this quest fora fitting
symbolizationwas the inventionof the
notion of the individual. The type of writingthat arrived with Defoe,
Richardson, and Fielding proved suitable for the purposes of the new
epoch because it recordedthe shiftto a more individualisticsociety and
Since the novel, as
provided an apt image of a new type of personality.
most fullyon this individualist
Wattinsists,had a greatabilityto "reflect
and innovating reorientation,"it became an importantplayer in the
and
process of societal transformation as such enjoyed wide success (Watt
13).
As a response to the new social situationand its need to symbolically
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TheModemNovel
a
from Sociological
Perspective
381
the
modernindividuality, novel offered
ample genericflexibility.
represent
Instead of depictingrealitylived by values establishedby a collective tra-
life fromthe point of view of individual exis-
dition,the novel portrayed
tence and its developmentin the course of time. This new format
proved
capable of accommodatinga varietyof individualexperiencesthatthedis-
leftuprooted. Since the narra-
of
integration the previous social tradition
tive whose culturalrole is to incorporate
incompatibleindividualpositions
avoid generic restrictions, novel's indeterminate-
the
must,by definition,
a
ness as a genreproved essential.Due to its formlessness, hybrid
melange
was
the
of earlierliterary
forms, novel, as Lukacs famouslydemonstrated,
for
able to provide a substitute the previous organic totality
while, at the
of
a
same time,not constituting generic uniformity its own.1 It was pre-
withoutpresenting
cisely this abilityto encompass generic discontinuities
any intrinsiccohesion of its own that constitutedthe originalityof the
and thatearned it its social status.
novel in theearly eighteenth
century
Due to the synthetic
quality of the novel and its openness to generic
the
syncretism, novel should be seen not as a positivelygiven genre but
instead,as FredricJamesonputs it, as a "symbolic act thatmustreuniteor
harmonizeheterogeneousnarrative
paradigmswhich have theirown spe-
cific and contradictory
ideological meaning" (Jameson, 1981: 144). Even
though Jameson does not specify which narrativeparadigms he has in
here. The two domains Watt identifiesas
mind,Watt can be instructive
as
so-
for
timein theearlyeighteenth
century significant
emerging the first
cial determinants,
each entailing a distinctnarrativeparadigm, are the
realms of the private and the public. Since the private and the public at
thatparticular
historicalmomentrepresented
two separate formsof social
life, the novel came to being as a symbolic act that articulatedeach of
while at the same timeprovidingres-
theserealms in theirdistinctiveness,
olutionto their
It
incongruity. was exactlythisabilityto show bothconflict
and an intricate
bond between the privateand the public (the psychologi-
cal and the social) thatmade thenovel an exclusive solutionto thecultural
of
various heterogeneousparadigms.
requirement harmonizing
With the peculiarity the originsof the novel, as well as its propen-
of
the
is
sityto become a dominantculturalproductof modernity, difficulty
thatgave rise to this
to capturethe culturalmultitude the environment
of
new genre.In a recentstudy,
Michael McKeon has argued thatearly eigh-
intellectualculturerestedon a set of negationsof previous
teenth-century
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