The Rise of the Novel Quotes

“Later novelists were to see that although formal realism imposed a more absolute and impersonal optical accuracy upon the manner in which literature performed its ancient task of holding a mirror up to nature, there were nevertheless ways in which a moral pattern could be conveyed, although they were perhaps more difficult and indirect than those of previous literary forms. For, in place of direct comment, or the power of tone and imagery, the pattern had to depend upon the manipulation of the mirror in time, in place, in closeness, in brilliance. "Point of view" was to become the crucial instrument whereby the writer expressed his moral sensibility, and pattern came to be the result of the hidden skill whereby the angles at which the mirror was held were made to reflect reality as the novelist saw it.”
― Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding