This critic described the reconception of literature as a "full and authentic report of human experience," which he called (*) "formal realism," in a book that investigates the social circumstances that allowed Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding to forge a new literary genre.
One chapter of this critic's most famous work contrasts one author's aim to create "the comic epic in prose" with his two predecessors' antipathy towards Classical epics. He argued that the diversity of experience created by economic specialization and the Protestant emphasis on the dignity of labor were what allowed individuals' daily lives to become worthy subject matters for literature. This critic described the reconception of literature as a "full and authentic report of human experience," which he called (*) "formal realism," in a book that investigates the social circumstances that allowed Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding to forge a new literary genre. This critic shares his last name with a character who replaces the disgruntled Arsene as the manservant to Mr. Knott. For 10 points, name this English critic who wrote The Rise of the Novel, and who shares his last name with the title character of a Samuel Beckett novel written after Murphy and before Molloy.
One chapter of this critic's most famous work contrasts one author's aim to create "the comic epic in prose" with his two predecessors' antipathy towards Classical epics.
Ian Watt