Reviewed by:

• Ian Watt: The Novel and the Wartime Critic by Marina MacKay
• John Richetti (bio)

I knew Ian Watt quite well, and I remember reading an essay he had published about his horrendous wartime experience: he spent three and a half years in the infamous River Kwai camp, where the inmates were forced to work under horrific conditions on the construction of the Burma-Thailand Railway (made famous by a David Lean film, that Watt by the way loathed, The Bridge on the River Kwai [1957]). Watt was strong enough to survive the brutal treatment of his captors, but Marina MacKay argues in her book that his years in this dehumanizing prisoner-of-war camp “helped to shape his hugely influential scholarly work, and, more broadly ... the extent to which the historiography of the novel is bound to the historical events of the mid-century” (2). No one before her has made this connection, and I think there is a good deal to be said for it. Certainly, as my interactions with him at Stanford showed, he never forgot his experiences in the camp, and with good reason— they were searingly traumatic, and many of his fellow prisoners died.

Despite Ian’s painful wartime experiences, I never found in his scholarly work on the eighteenth-century novel and on Joseph Conrad any sign that his history affected his critical writing. Ian Watt: The Novel and the Wartime Critic does not claim that there are direct or obvious references in Watt’s work to his prisoner-of-war experience. MacKay argues, however, that there are frequent “incomplete and private references” (54). She cites a passage at the close of Watt’s discussion of Robinson Crusoe in The Rise of the Novel and then generalizes about her approach to Watt’s criticism in which she writes that he “thinks through painfully distinctive modern experiences: problems of subjectivity, individuality, and the demands of communal existence; the lived effects of violence, dispossession and fear” (55). Indeed, his colleague at Stanford W.B. Carnochan, in the afterword to the 2001 edition of The Rise of the Novel, noticed a similar link between the POW camp experience and Watt’s admiration for Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. Watt wrote that “[Defoe], among the great writers of the past, has presented the struggle for survival in the bleak perspectives which recent human history has brought back to a commanding position on the human stage” (The Rise of the Novel [1957], 134). Of [End Page 447] course, something similar might well be said of many literary critics who did not have Watt’s traumatic history, although MacKay’s ultimately convincing point is that such an emphasis is stronger and is relevant to an understanding of Watt’s critical works.

An important feature of this book is the emphasis on the remarkable longevity of The Rise of the Novel, more than sixty years old and still in print. It remains a standard work for students of the early English novel, even in the face of a good deal of disagreement with its approach and rejection of its major conclusions. MacKay cites Nicholas Seager’s work surveying eighteenth-century English novel criticism in which he finds that Watt’s book has been “more often caricatured than consulted” (53). Some older readers of this journal may remember, however, and perhaps like me have a copy of the special expanded issue, a substantial book, of Eighteenth-Century Fiction called Reconsidering the Rise of the Novel (ECF 12, nos. 2–3, 2000), with an introduction by David Blewett, the founding editor of this journal, who remarked on “the remarkable staying power of a book that may be said to have opened up eighteenth-century fiction as an area of serious scholarly investigation” (141). The ECF volume begins with an essay by Watt, which Blewett called “a fascinating slice of intellectual autobiography” (141)—“Flat-Footed and Fly-Blown: The Realities of Realism”—that outlines his intellectual development from Cambridge English to Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School as well as his own commitment...

审核人：

• 伊恩·瓦特（Ian Watt）：小说和战时评论家玛丽娜·麦凯（ Marina MacKay）
• 约翰·里奇蒂（生物）

我非常了解伊恩·瓦特（Ian Watt），我还记得读过一篇他发表的关于他可怕的战时经历的文章：他在臭名昭著的桂河营地度过了三年半的时间，在那里囚犯被迫在可怕的条件下工作，缅甸-泰国铁路（以戴维·利恩（David Lean）的电影而闻名，瓦特（Watt）讨厌它，《桂河大桥》（The Bridge on the Kwai）[1957]）。瓦特（Watt）足够强大，可以幸免于俘虏的残酷对待，但玛丽娜·麦凯（Marina MacKay）在她的书中辩称，他在这个人性化的战俘营地中的岁月“有助于塑造他具有巨大影响力的学术工作，并且更广泛地...小说的史学在何种程度上与本世纪中叶的历史事件有关”（2）。她之前没有人建立过这种联系，我认为对此有很多话要说。当然，正如我在斯坦福大学与他的往来所显示的那样，他从未忘记他在营地中的经历，并且有充分的理由-这些经历使人痛苦不堪，他的许多囚犯也死了。

尽管Ian经历了痛苦的战时经历，但在他关于18世纪小说和Joseph Conrad的学术著作中，我从未发现任何迹象表明他的历史影响了他的批判性写作。伊恩·瓦特（Ian Watt）：《小说和战时评论家》并未声称瓦特的作品直接或明显地提及了他的战俘经历。麦凯认为，然而，经常有“不完整和私人引用”（54）。她在瓦特（Watt）在《小说的崛起》中对鲁滨逊·克鲁索（Robinson Crusoe）的讨论结束时引用了一段话然后概述了她对瓦特批评的方法，她写道：“他通过痛苦而独特的现代经验来思考：主观性，个性化问题和对公共生存的要求。暴力，剥夺和恐惧的现实影响”（55）。确实，他在斯坦福WB Carnochan的同事在2001年版《小说的崛起》的后记中注意到，战俘营的经历与瓦特对丹尼尔·迪福和塞缪尔·理查森的钦佩之间有着相似的联系。瓦特写道：“ [过去]的伟大作家中，[[Defoe]曾以悲观的眼光呈现了为生存而奋斗的历史，近代人类历史已将其带回人类舞台上的主导地位”（《小说的崛起》 [1957年， ]，134）。的[结束页447]当然，对于许多没有瓦特受过创伤的历史的文学评论家来说，也可能有类似的话，尽管麦凯的最终令人信服的观点是，这种强调更加有力，并且与对瓦特的批判作品的理解有关。

本书的一个重要特点是强调了《小说的崛起》的超长寿命，该小说已有六十多年的历史了，至今仍在印刷中。即使面对很多反对它的方法和拒绝其主要结论的问题，它仍然是早期英语小说学生的标准著作。麦凯（MacKay）引用了尼古拉斯·西格（Nicholas Seager）的作品，该作品对18世纪的英语小说批评进行了调查，他发现瓦特的书“被讽刺的多于参考”（53）。但是，该杂志的一些老读者可能还记得，也许和我一样，有一本特刊的副本，这是一本十八世纪小说的重要著作，名为《重新考虑小说的兴起》（ECF）。12号 （2000年2月3日至3日），该杂志的创始编辑David Blewett作了介绍，他评论说：“这本书的非凡的持久力可以说是十八世纪以来小说界的一个严肃学术领域。调查”（141）。该ECF量开始由瓦，这是凯特-布莱维特称“知识分子自传的迷人片”的文章（141） - “措手不及和飞吹：现实主义的现实”，也就是说概述他的智力发展，从剑桥英语西奥多阿多诺（Adorno）和法兰克福学校以及他自己的承诺...