Canto is an imprint offering a range of tides, classic and more recent, across a broad spectrum of subject areas and interests. History, literature, biography, archaeology, politics, religion, psychology, philosophy and science are all represented in Canto's specially selected list of tides, which now offers some of the best and most accessible of Cambridge publishing to a wider readership. In their original versions, the ultimate fates of Faust, Don Quixote, and Don Juan reflect the anti-individualism of their time: Faust and Don Juan are punished in hellfire, and Don Quixote is mocked. The three represent the positive drive of individualism, which brings down on itself repression by social disapproval. A century later Defoe's Robinson Crusoe embodies a more favorable consideration of the individual, but only if one refuses to take seriously Defoe's state- ment that Crusoe's isolation is punishment for disobeying his father. In this volume Ian Watt examines these four myths of the mod- ern world, all created in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, as distinctive products of a historically new society. He shows how the original versions of Faust (1587), Don Quixote (1605), and Don Juan (ca. 1620) presented unflattering portrayals of the three, whereas the Romantic period two centuries later re-created them as admirable and even heroic. Robinson Crusoe (1719) is seen as repre- sentative of the new religious, economic, and social attitudes. All four myths have been transformed, often by major writers (Rousseau, Goethe, Byron, Dostoevsky), and given a more universal application with a favorable view of individualism. The punitive tales were turned into popular secular myths. This change came about partly because individualism had become a cultural and politi- cal product, but equally importantly because myth itself had become a concept and was therefore capable of manipulation. At the present time, the four mythic figures have retained their prestige, but their force diminishes as the mass-entertainment industry — radio, televi- sion, movies - provides so many rivals for time and influence. The four figures reveal the problems of individualism in the modern period: solitude, narcissism, and the claims of the self versus the claims of society. None of them marries or has lasting relations with women; rather, each has as his closest friend a male servant. Mephistopheles, Sancho Panza, Catalinon, and Friday are devoted till the end and happy in their subordinate role — the perfect personal servant. This suggests the self-centeredness of the four figures. Each pursues his own view of what he should be, raising strong questions about his character as a hero and about the society whose ideals he reflects. MYTHS OF MODERN INDIVIDUALISM MYTHS OF MODERN INDIVIDUALISM Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe IAN WATT Stanford University CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY IOOI 1-421 I, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1996 First published 1996 Canto edition 1997 Ubrary of Congress cataloging in publication data Watt, Ian P. Myths of modern individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe / Ian Watt. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0521 48011 6 (hardback) 1. Individualism in literature. 2. Literature and society. I. Title. PN56.157W37 1996 809'.93353 — dc2o 95-31562 CIP A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The illustrations on pages 28 and 142 are reproduced by permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library. ISBN o 521 48011 6 hardback ISBN o 521 58564 3 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2002 Contents Preface page xi Introduction xiii PART I: THREE RENAISSANCE MYTHS 1 From George Faust to Faustbuch 3 2 The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus 27 3 Don Quixote of La Mancha 48 4 El Burlador and Don Juan 90 5 Renaissance Individualism and the Counter-Reformation 120 PART II: FROM PURITAN ETHIC TO ROMANTIC APOTHEOSIS 6 Robinson Crusoe 141 7 Crusoe, Ideology, and Theory 172 8 Romantic Apotheosis of Renaissance Myths 193 9 Myth and Individualism 228 CODA: THOUGHTS ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus 245 Michel Tournier's Friday 255 Some Notes on the Present 267 Appendix: The worldwide diffusion of the myths 277 Index 285 IX Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe was all but completed when Ian Watt's health deteriorated in 1994 after a serious operation. At the time of his hospitalization, he was working on final revisions in response to careful and discerning readings of the manuscript by M. H. Black and others. Ruth Watt and the publishers are extremely grateful to Linda Bree for her painstaking and constructive editorial work in the latter stages. Dr. Bree made possible the publication of this book in its present form. Preface This book, alas, began more than forty years ago. I was married and had two children, and my fellowship at St. John's College, Cam- bridge, was due to run out in little more than a year. I had then been working endlessly, but not very satisfactorily, on a book about the effects of the alphabet and printing. The only published result of those labors is the article in collaboration with Jack Goody entitled "The Consequences of Literacy" eventually published in Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1963). Turning thoughts of my future in other directions, I suddenly came up with the notion of no fewer than three books. The first was a reworking of my fellowship dissertation for St. John's College, "The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel": This was eventu- ally published in 1957 as The Rise of the Novel. The second was a book about Conrad. Ever since as a boy I had cycled from Dover to Bishopsbourne to see the house where Conrad died, I'd always somehow assumed that one day I would write a book about him. That proved to be a tall order, but I published the first volume, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, in 1979. I then decided that since the myth book — I thought — was more or less complete in my mind, I would try that before doing the second volume on Conrad. My assumption was that the myth book would be easier, and quick- er to finish. I was, of course, wrong. I started writing the present text around 1980, at about the time I became the first director of the Stanford.Humanities Center, and I kept working on it while in the meantime I published a study of Conrad's Nostromo and contributed a long introduction to Conrad's Almayer's Folly for the Cambridge University Press critical edition, both in 1988. What kept me going on the myth book was a sense that I was on new and fascinating terrain that had never been treated before in quite the comparative and historical fashion I intended. Preface That, roughly, is my story. It goes without saying that to treat the idea of the "myths of modern individualism" comprehensively would be an impossibly large task. There are many other modern myths, from Joan of Arc to Frankenstein; and quite apart from that, my chosen four have had an enormous number of versions, and have been the objects of an enormous amount of scholarship. So I have had to be highly selective, and to hurry over — even completely omit — many things. I am not trying to be definitive: The book is essentially an amateur's study, and it is addressed not to the scholar but to the general reader. I have, perhaps unnecessarily, translated all but the easiest and briefest passages from the French, German, and Spanish originals (translations, throughout, are my own unless otherwise stated); and I have provided documentation of a modest kind. Per- haps I should mention that during the writing and revision I have often groaned at the sight of excellent notes I did not think there was room to include. And I must also add that the fact that a work is not mentioned should not be taken to mean I have not read it. I think that the general idea is interesting and important, and I hope that others, especially professional comparatists and historians, will take up the tale more satisfactorily. Some of the material was given as the Alexander Lectures at Univer- sity College, Toronto, or as talks to the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast, to the Third International Association of Sicilian Anthropological Studies at Palermo, or to the University of Houston, the University of Hawaii, or the National University of Australia. My thanks to the good friends who both read and helpfully criticized parts of the manuscript, notably Tom Moser, Dave Riggs, Jack Goody, Joseph Frank, Fred Crews, Tony Tanner, and Bliss Carnochan. I also received invaluable help from people who man- aged both to decipher the manuscript and then to type it: Virginia Schrader, Mary Lou McCourt, and Meg Minto. My greatest debt, as ever, is to my wife, Ruth Watt. Xll Introduction In April 1951, I published an essay called "Robinson Crusoe as a myth." It began: We do not usually think of Robinson Crusoe as a novel. Defoe's first full- length work of fiction seems to fall more naturally into place with Faust, Don Juan, and Don Quixote, the great myths of our civilization. What these myths are about is fairly easy to say. Their basic plots, their enduring images, all exhibit a single-minded pursuit by the protagonist of one of the characteristic aspirations of Western man.