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THE REALISTIC NOVEL
The growth of the novel-reading public brought about a series of changes both in the reader-writer relationship and in the purpose and structure of the novel itself. The writer, whose profession was now becoming profitable (freeing him from any form of patronage), began to write to please his publisher, who was now his direct employer but, above all, to please a public of middle and upper-class people, mainly shopkeepers, clerical employees or self-made merchants, who were no longer interested in ancient mythology, chivalric events or “collective tradition”, but wanted to read about their own problems and individual experiences. Sensitive to the new tastes and tendencies of the time, novelists began to refuse customary plots and the ancient, classical models still proposed by some critics such as Steele and Addison, but looked to “reality” for ration. The novel, therefore, became more and more a picture of life and came to be defined as “realistic” [E1] [E2] [I1] [F1] [ES1], not only because of “what” it presented (“whatness”), but above all of “how” it presented it (“howness”).To understand the meaning of the term “realistic”, which may sound a little ambiguous, as it has already been applied to some past writers (Nashe, for example), it is useful to consider some of the elements which characterized the l8th-century “realistic” novel:
- “clock time” and “physical setting” began to be used. Time and place in fact ceased to be vague concepts, as in Sidney or Bunyan, but were made tangible through the use of precise details, such as names of streets and towns or reference to particular days or even times of the day;
- certain “communicating qualities”, such as colour, size, solidity, extension and number, became of primary importance;
- attention was focused not only on outdoor settings, but more and more frequently on “interiors”, such as ballrooms, bedrooms, etc.;
- characters were endowed with actual names and surnames;
- greater importance was given to money as a status symbol;
- a triangular conflict was emphasized between bourgeois values (money, advancement, social justice), chivalric values (cult of honour, search for glory) and the values of the traditional gentleman (manners, fashion);
- a new type of “hero” developed, practical, self-made and self-reliant, endowed with common sense and prudence, quite the opposite of the heroic, adventurous hero of romances.
The novelist who first broke with tradition and started this new type of fiction was Defoe.
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