Once Upon a Time, the Novel Had a Structure

Abstract

Once upon a time the novel had a structure. That is to say, it appeared in a particular way, a ‘realistic’ way. This way was not Sterne’s way or Diderot’s or De Maistre’s, but Defoe’s and Richardson’s, since Sterne and Diderot and De Maistre wrote another way. Another novel way. The manner of the novel structure that finally became Scott’s had its origins in the ‘realistic’ patterns established by Defoe and Richardson whose allegiences to exterior settings and interior atmospheres, to life-like character representations and dialogues with tags, eventually yielded to Scott’s modification of the structure. Scott’s form became a way of disciplined categories of realistic representation, that is, a form which one could easily recognize (even without the blurb on the dust jacket) as being ‘a novel.’ It need not be belabored that the reason Scott became so popular was that he was able to develop a form of narrative discourse that both effectively fictionalized the historical discourse of the time, ‘showed a flair for the highly coloured, picturesque incident and situation and revealed himself a master of “tushery”,’¹ and expanded on the techniques of Defoe and Richardson thus creating a ‘new realism’ that, for better or worse, has remained forever vital to today.