Vincent Newey

Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel, which Michael McKeon energetically bids to transcend, gave us, whatever else, the clear image and serviceable concept: ‘formal realism’, the growth of ‘the middle class’, secularised Protestant Man proudly bearing the standard of an aggressive ‘individualism’ – on Crusoe’s hard-won island as in the socioeconomic landscape of contemporary England. McKeon’s is on the whole more the beetle’s-eye view, tracking at the dark tangled roots the processes of historical change and he novel’s becoming.’