The Modern Novel from a Sociological Perspective, Artykuły PHD, Genologia
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//-->The Modern Novel from a Sociological Perspective: Towards a Strategic Use of the Notion ofGenresAuthor(s): Daniel JustSource:Journal of Narrative Theory,Vol. 38, No. 3 (Fall 2008), pp. 378-397Published by:Journal of Narrative TheoryStable URL:.Accessed: 28/10/2014 17:05Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at..JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org..Journal of Narrative TheoryandDepartment of English Language and Literature, Eastern MichiganUniversityare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toJournal of NarrativeTheory.This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:05:07 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and ConditionsTheModernNotionNovelTowardsfroma SociologicalUsePerspective:of thea Strategicof GenresDaniel JustIn his book Puissances du roman(1942), a textdescribedin its prefaceasa sociological study of the novel, Roger Caillois examines the link be-tween the novel and modern society and concludes, with the keennesscharacteristic thepoliticallycommittedofintellectuals thetime,thattheoftypeof socialitythatgives rise to the genre of the novel is fundamentallyAsfragmented. Georg Lukacs and othersbeforehim,also Caillois arguesthatthegenreof thenovel is a symbolicformof representationclosely re-narrativelated to a specifictypeof society.The novel, a dominantgenreofhistoricalcir-is,modernity, accordingto Caillois, a productof particularcumstancesand a societythatreduces the social aspect of life to the mereco-existence of individuals. Caillois wonders whetherwe can thinkof adifferentand imagine a social and historicalfullnessthattypeof narrativeis missingfromboth the novel and the societyin which it emerges.Spec-could represent fullnessoftheulatingabout the ways in which literaturegesture,he denies thatnarrativesundispersedsocialityin an anticipatorynovelisticchannels.Evencould stepout of thedispersivesocialitythroughthoughthe question of whetherthe novel could eventuallybe broughttosubscribeto such a programis, as Denis Hollier has more recentlysug-gested (Hollier 66), never ruled out in Puissances du roman,Caillois re-somainsratherskepticalabout thepotentialof thenovel to be transformedNT:NT:38.3©J Journal NarrativeTheory (Fall2008):378-397.Copyright2008byJofJournal NarrativeofTheory.This content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:05:07 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and ConditionsThe ModemNovelafrom SociologicalPerspective379toradicallythatit would be able to offeran alternative a bourgeois depic-tion of monadic individuality.***fixednor au-theAs withall literaryforms, genreof thenovel is neitheroftonomous.As Hayden Whitehas put it in an elegantrephrasing Jose Or-thatman has onlyhistory no essence,buttega 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 theyevolve and interactwith othergenres and with theirsocial environment.when theydoisHowever, theyalso disappear.The difficulty to determineand when they merelymutate.It is this assessment that has become in-tocenturycreasinglyproblematic make in thelast decades of thetwentiethofbecause of an unprecedentedblurring genericboundariesand the flour-ishingof hybridgenres.Has the novel died? But, then,it was supposed tohave died already many times, with Robbe-Grillet, Joyce, or evenhow and why did itFlaubert. If the novel has been merelytransformed,--change, and what if anything has remainedof its originalconstitution?asIf we accept boththe factthatpostcolonial writing, PeterHitchcockhasrecently argued, opposes the generic nature of metropolitan writing,drive thathelps to justifyimperialism,therebyopposing its classificatorynow to apply the notion ofand the fact thatit is, indeed, more difficultdoes thatmean the end of genre criticismforms,literarygenresto currentas both a historicallyand politicallyobsolete methodology?As with any othergenre,in orderto account for the novel's ultimatepoint 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 itstheeclecticism and generic fluidity, novel's startingpoint is notstylisticeasy to locate. On one hand, critics have argued that the novel can betracedback to Don Quixote while, on the otherhand, manyhave claimed,orthatas a genreit was notfullyestablisheduntilthelate eighteenth, eventhe early nineteenthcentury(Robert 11, 231-233). According to MikhailtoBakhtin's widely recognized contribution this issue, the novel origi-nated in the earlyRenaissance era. Rabelais is Bakhtin'scelebratedexam-oftime represented multiplicity so-thewho forthe firstple of the writertheirunique perspectiveson theworld underacial voices withoutmergingThis content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:05:07 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions380JNTsingle authorialvoice, while Dostoevsky serves as such an exemplarycaseat the other end of the novel's evolution. However appealing Bakhtin'sofview of the novel as a genre thatembodies the plurality culturalformsfashionmay be, it neverthe-and social discourses in a popular-democraticless proves veryexclusive forthepurposes of examiningthe novel fromatheassociological perspective.In Bakhtin's writings, novel features a no-tion of such conceptual puritythatonly very few books comply with it,heleaving 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-hecentury, does not necessarilydiscreditthose the-ning of the eighteenthfurtherback in history.oristswho, like Bakhtin,recognizedits foundationtraitsbut a search forWhat guides Watt's inquiryis not a set of stylisticthe momentwhen a specific type of storytellinggained a pivotal socialThe new lit-role. For Watt,thismomentwas the early eighteenthcentury.one as rad-oferaryformcreatedby the English writers thatperiod strikesqualities and because of itsically innovativeboth because of its literarySince the new genrewas capable of recordingthe signifi-social function.cant socio-cultural changes of the time, the novel, according to Watt,butgenre,as one formof artamong others,emergednot only as a literaryas a privilegedculturalproduct.Althoughit is truethatall formsof artarereact to, or ignore theirsocial environment,culturalproductsthatreflect,the novel, at a particularhistoricalmoment,emergedas a socially indis-inAspensable artifact. England was undergoinga radical transformationthe wake of the industrialrevolution,and as its culture struggledto re-spond to these changes, society required popular means of representingtheand symbolizingnew challenges.As Wattconvincinglydemonstrates,outcome of this quest fora fittingsymbolizationwas the inventionof thenotion of the individual. The type of writingthat arrived with Defoe,Richardson, and Fielding proved suitable for the purposes of the newepoch because it recordedthe shiftto a more individualisticsociety andSince the novel, asprovided an apt image of a new type of personality.most fullyon this individualistWattinsists,had a greatabilityto "reflectand innovating reorientation,"it became an importantplayer in theandprocess of societal transformation as such enjoyed wide success (Watt13).As a response to the new social situationand its need to symbolicallyThis content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:05:07 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and ConditionsTheModemNovelafrom SociologicalPerspective381themodernindividuality, novel offeredample genericflexibility.representInstead of depictingrealitylived by values establishedby a collective tra-life fromthe point of view of individual exis-dition,the novel portrayedtence and its developmentin the course of time. This new formatprovedcapable of accommodatinga varietyof individualexperiencesthatthedis-leftuprooted. Since the narra-ofintegration the previous social traditiontive whose culturalrole is to incorporateincompatibleindividualpositionsavoid generic restrictions, novel's indeterminate-themust,by definition,aness as a genreproved essential.Due to its formlessness, hybridmelangewastheof earlierliteraryforms, novel, as Lukacs famouslydemonstrated,forable to provide a substitute the previous organic totalitywhile, at theofasame time,not constituting generic uniformity its own.1 It was pre-withoutpresentingcisely this abilityto encompass generic discontinuitiesany intrinsiccohesion of its own that constitutedthe originalityof theand thatearned it its social status.novel in theearly eighteenthcenturyDue to the syntheticquality of the novel and its openness to genericthesyncretism, novel should be seen not as a positivelygiven genre butinstead,as FredricJamesonputs it, as a "symbolic act thatmustreuniteorharmonizeheterogeneousnarrativeparadigmswhich have theirown spe-cific and contradictoryideological meaning" (Jameson, 1981: 144). Eventhough Jameson does not specify which narrativeparadigms he has inhere. The two domains Watt identifiesasmind,Watt can be instructiveasso-fortimein theearlyeighteenthcentury significantemerging the firstcial determinants,each entailing a distinctnarrativeparadigm, are therealms of the private and the public. Since the private and the public atthatparticularhistoricalmomentrepresentedtwo separate formsof sociallife, the novel came to being as a symbolic act that articulatedeach ofwhile at the same timeprovidingres-theserealms in theirdistinctiveness,olutionto theirItincongruity. was exactlythisabilityto show bothconflictand an intricatebond between the privateand the public (the psychologi-cal and the social) thatmade thenovel an exclusive solutionto theculturalofvarious heterogeneousparadigms.requirement harmonizingWith the peculiarity the originsof the novel, as well as its propen-oftheissityto become a dominantculturalproductof modernity, difficultythatgave rise to thisto capturethe culturalmultitude the environmentofnew genre.In a recentstudy,Michael McKeon has argued thatearly eigh-intellectualculturerestedon a set of negationsof previousteenth-centuryThis content downloaded from 193.0.118.39 on Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:05:07 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions
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