"Novel: La genesi del romanzo moderno nell'Inghilterra del Settecento". [Novel: The Rise of the Modern Novel in Eighteenth-Century England.] by Riccardo Capoferro

Review of Riccardo Capoferro's monograph entitled "Novel". It discusses the book's aim to update the debate on the rise of that literary genre started by Ian Watt and carried on by Michael McKeon and other scholars, hinging on the premise that the novel is based on the self's observation and interpretation of external and internal stimuli. This aim triggered an approach to realism that differed from previous forms of mimetic representation, as it no longer depended on the raising of a mirror to the outside world or man's actions, but on processing the ideas received from the senses within intrasubjective experience which becomes intersubjective only when the the form has become stabilised.