The Literal Imagination: Selected Essays

Ian Watt

Edited by Bruce Thompson

"Literary criticism, for him, was not a means ofstaking out a turf or demonstrating one's radical bona fides; it was ajargon-free conversation among equals whose shared love of literature could betaken for granted."
--Frederick Crews, University of California, Berkeley

This volume brings together previously uncollected essays by Ian Watt, oneof the major literary critics of the later twentieth century, famed equally forhis distinguished work on Joseph Conrad as for his pioneering investigationinto the genesis of English prose fiction. In addition to the author'sreassessment of The Rise of the Novel--a work that remains definitiveover forty years after its initial publication--the essays in The LiteralImagination include studies of Augustan literature, Gothic and comicfiction, the prose style of Henry James, and the humanistic imagination ofGeorge Orwell. A final essay contains Watt's reflections on his experience as aprisoner of the Japanese during the Second World War. In some cases derivingfrom lectures or talks, these essays make marvelous reading, resplendent withIan Watt's brilliance and wit.

Ian Watt was Professor of English at Stanford University and Founding Director of the Stanford Humanities Center.

Published in association with the Stanford Humanities Center

328 pages. 2002. Cloth: $45.00, now $20.00; paperback: $22.95, now $15.00.