I had every intention of writing the most inspired post today. In fact, I had every intention of writing the most inspired post yesterday, and also the day before, but left it too late, and now my inspiration levels are low. It's funny how trivial things can so affect your mood. My mother decided to be kind and do my washing (!), in the process ruining my favourite shirt. I felt like bursting into tears. And so I'm writing it here and using that as a springboard into realism, oddly enough. Because isn't blogging (and e-mailing, perhaps more to the point) an extention of our need to communicate the real, the everyday. I was reading Ian Watt's "The Rise of the Novel" today, and he begins by analysing, very carefully (perhaps painstakingly, but I'm not complaining; at least it's not Russian Formalism!) exactly what it was that made the novel different from what went before. He touches upon a range of elements, but what they all boil down to is realism. Perhaps that's obvious: it's something I've been aware of. But Watt has a way of stating what you already knew in terms that make it seem enlightening and new. Before the novel, literary worth was measured in terms of what had come before. Literature was good if it conformed to the forms that were pre-established: historical event, mythology, moral plots etc. Just think of Shakespeare reusing plots, some that had already been reused. To break away from that was entirely new, and in breaking away from set plot structures and literary forms the novel went even further away from traditional literature. It presented plots that were not attempts at illustrating age-old morals or universal certainties, as literature had formally done. Instead, it focused on the individual: truth comes from individual experience rather than universal "truths" that are pre-established and overarching. So the novel departs from an established conformity to tradition (truth measured by conformity to traditional practice, universal concepts) and instead embraces a Descartesian (surely that can't read right?) individualist truth (Decartes was one of the first philosophers to "bring about the modern assumption whereby the pursuit of truth is conceived of as a wholly individual matter, logically independent of the tradition of past thought, and indeed as more likely to be arrived at by a departure from it" [Watt 13)), one that is based on individual experience and originality.

It was actually in the eighteenth century, as the novel was rising to power, that the term "original" took on it's modern meaning of new and independent; before it had meant "having existed from the first." A classic example of how we accept our cultural definitions of a word without considering what the word should really mean. Original. From the origin.

And yet we still say "that was the original plan". So "original" has two diametrically opposed meanings, to think about it. First. And new.

But that's getting into semantics.

Watt goes on to analyse the role of characterization and place (both related to "realist" individual experience) in the novel, focusing on the use of the particular as opposed to the universal and the general. He illustrates this with the use of proper names. By giving characters proper names, novelists were assigning them an individual reality. Of course characters in previous literature had been giving proper names, but Watt argues that these were always "types" - symbolic names, often only a first or only a last name. While some characters in novels have names that obviously have a meaning (in Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters," which I just finished, there is a Mrs Goodenough, which springs to mind), Watt claims that they are also believable names; names that make sense in the very particular and real context of the world the book creates. A novel aims to create a world that is believable because truth is based upon individual experience, and this experience involves particulars of time, place, and character.

The temporal dimension of the novel is also a key element Watt puts forward as a defining differential between the new genre and its predecessors (although he never goes far to define what he means by these predecessors, which are invariably touched upon as including drama and "romance", but never defined or catagorised, which seems to be a stumbling block in his arguments to concretely define the "difference" between these un-namables and the novel, which is elaborately defined). In plays, including Ancient Greek and Shakespeare, for instance, the time is reduced usually to 24 hours, during which we are given a glimpse into what is meant to be a defining moral moment. Watt argues that this approach to time "implies that the truth about existence can be as fully unfolded in the space of a day as in the space of a lifetime" (23). The novel's refusal to accept the idea of "universal truths" (a rejection that was mirrored in philosophical realism at the time, but which Watt argues was a parallel development and not a causal precursor to literary realism) is mirrored in its broader temporal frame, which allows the reader to gain a more realistic view of individual experience as something that builds upon a lifetime of particulars.

It is interesting to consider Watt's very carefully examined theory of literary realism along with the historical and philosophical climate of the eighteenth century. Since the Renaissance, there was a move away from the generally accepted universal truths in the world, towards a more questioning philosophy that refused to accept traditional truths. We see this culminating in modernism and the complete rejection of all truths in favor of a complete reliance on sensory perception, beginning with stream-of-consciousness and moving on towards disjointed glimpses in postmodern texts. The Waste Land comes to mind as a result of this move away from universal truths. While in the Victorian era, this questioning spirit shifted also towards God and the very creation of our earth, in our modern era it has perhaps gone even further than a reliance upon method and science and individual experience towards a distrust even for sensory perception and experience: we even distrust our own senses.

My thoughts are perhaps running away with themselves and I am going to calm them down now and move away from all this theorizing.

I can't make up my mind whether to use theorising or theorizing, apparently. Theorising looks right, somehow, but theorizing types easier. Just like "double quotes" type much easier than 'single quotes', which I have to look at the keys to find.

I am going to Exeter tomorrow to get our new apartment. I feel nervous and excited at the same time. I'm elated to be beginning this new chapter, to be actually starting the MA and not wishing that I could someday do it. But at the same time I can't help worrying that something is going to prevent it, and even if it does get here, finally, it will be too difficult in some way. Having not been to an English university I'm not quite sure what to expect. I don't doubt my
ability to pass it, I just doubt my ability to be as good at it as I want to be. I want us both to be confident and not have to worry.

But I'm throwing myself into this whole preparation game. My eagerness to get to IKEA is quite pathetic, really. I am also excited to show Mum and Dad around the apartment tomorrow. They are quite looking forward to the trip, I think, and I'm glad that they are coming with me - it will be good for my spirits. I do hope they like it though. I suppose my nerves are partially a result of the very few minutes I actually spent in the apartment before I had to tell the letting agent that I wanted it. I know I couldn't have found anywhere as nice. But there's still part of me that worries. There's always part of me that worries!!

I am still mad that Wives and Daughters had no ending. How dare she die?

I have developed an addiction to Apica notebooks. I found somewhere to order some more. And I also noticed that they are the kind sent to Simon on The Interpreter. Great movie.

I have loaded Dad's boot up with a kettle, mixer, toaster, pots, pans, candles, a colander, etc. Oh how the little things in life excite...

Okay, this is simpering off into oblivion, so I'm finishing now.

As Lori would say: C'est tout!