THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL:FROM DEFOE TO RICHARDSON

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “INTEGRATION OF MODERN LINGUISTICS WITH SCIENCE, EDUCATION, AND PRACTICE IN THE PROCESS OF GLOBALIZATION: NEW APPROACHES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND CHALLENGES”, DECEMBER 4, 2025 282 THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL:FROM DEFOE TO RICHARDSON Samadova Gulnoza, Sanaqulova Nilufar, Ismoilova Gulzoda, Imomova Aziza, Umurzakova A Students of Navoi State Unoversity https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17810160 Abstract. The present article broadens the historical, cultural and linguistic scope of the essay to cover the emergence of the English novel in the eighteenth century, including studies of such works as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, to focus on the shifts from factual, documentary to intimate, psychological prose fiction. Literacy development, the emerging middle class, religion, economic change, standardization of English, major realist genres, moral didacticism, point of view, and the shift to natural and plastic prose of the early novel are also treated in detail. Each subject is explored in turn to show how this gave rise to the novel in its modern form, situating how Defoe’s external realism and Richardson’s psychological subjectivity collectively gave rise to modern English fiction Keywords: English novel, Defoe, Richardson, realism, narrative voice, linguistic change, eighteenth-century literature. By the eighteenth century, readers were already familiar with several literary genres, including romance, epic poetry, religious prose, and drama. However, the social, economic, and vernacular changes of the day created a unique niche in the hearts of readers for the new genre of the novel. The English novel emerged as a result of increased literacy, further advances of the print culture, the growth of the middle class and demand for the realistic novel. Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson are sometimes called the fathers of the English novel. Their contrasting narrative strategies—Defoe’s documentary realism and Richardson’s epistolary emotionalism—represent two key literary tendencies that shaped the future of prose fiction. By focusing on works such as ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Pamela,’ this article explores how social, cultural, and linguistic factors contributed to the emergence of the novel and how these writers paved the way for modern narrative techniques.In the 18th century, the literature market grew from commerce, urbanization and social mobility as a new, urban middle class who were gaining economic and cultural power began to seek literature that reflected their taste, concerns and aspirations. The novel was different from the aristocratic romances of previous centuries. It provided readers with stories about normal people dealing with moral quandaries, personal development, and social tensions. Another factor involved literacy increasing because Protestantism influenced personal reading with emphasis and because elementary education expanded with growth. Intellectuals gathered in coffeehouses, lending libraries, and reading societies. These spots held the developing literacy market f or new reading material types. Prose narratives especially entertained and educated people there. The growth of the printing press, cheaper printing, a rise in better-read periodicals, and the growing power of publishers helped the development of the novel. Prose stories serialized in newspapers and magazines made narrative fiction a staple; the periodicals also created a ready market for novels. Writers were encouraged to write both INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “INTEGRATION OF MODERN LINGUISTICS WITH SCIENCE, EDUCATION, AND PRACTICE IN THE PROCESS OF GLOBALIZATION: NEW APPROACHES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND CHALLENGES”, DECEMBER 4, 2025 283 entertaining and socially conscious pieces. Publishers had a central role in this novel market, identifying the middle-class taste in genres such as the travel story, the moral tale, and the sentimental novel. The novels of Defoe and Richardson were published at a time when the reading public was ready for fiction to be paired with practical knowledge and emotion. Linguistic changes also contributed significantly to the emergence of the novel. As English became more standardized through dictionaries, grammar guides, and printed texts, authors increasingly wrote in clear, accessible English. This linguistic standardization made it possible for writers to communicate directly with a broader reading public without relying on Latin or highly ornate language. In addition, the emergence of personal and first person writing, such as journal entries, diaries, letters and memoirs, tended to reflect the same turn toward the subjectivity and the personal. These works would serve as precursors for Defoe’s autobiographical novels and Richardson’s epistolary novels, and opened literature to interior psychological experience. Robinson Crusoe has been described as the most famous and the greatest English realist novel. Daniel Defoe’s novel of a shipwrecked sailor who survives alone on a desert island is presented so matter-of-factly, so practically, that it has the authority of an autobiography and reads as though Crusoe’s experience were real. Defoe adds personal journal entries, economic calculations and musings on work, religion, and morality. Written in an unpretentious, realistic style and in the common vocabulary, the book was accessible to the middle classes. Defoe’s narrative also conveys some of the values of his time: self-sufficiency, hard work, sensible action, and faith in God, perhaps to a fault. Crusoe’s island becomes an allegory of the making of British capitalism.Other reasons and factors influenced the rise of the English novel. The invention of traveling library was one of those and via trade; it was developed more than before. The social milieu and social condition of the life of the middleclasswere very much affected by the rise of the English novel. These people inthe eighteenth century were acquiring their education, what they wereacquiring was less exclusively classical in context than the education of theupper-class. Women readers were considered as a crucial factor inproviding readership. A better education for women was coincided with aperiod of a greater leisure for women in middle and upper ranks. The greater leisure for women left a time space, which needed to be filled in. Men were also educated and had an intension to see beyond the narrow local interests and profession to an inspired motivation. Both men and women were receptive to literary forms, which would open up to them recent and real worlds outside their own world. The reproduction of newspapers in the eighteenth century is evidence on the rise of the novel and so is the popularity of 19 Mariwan N. Hasan: The Eighteenth Century and the Rise of the English Novel the periodicals. The seed of Richardson’s Pamela was a plan to write a series of letters, which provided examples of the correct way of continuing in various delicate social situations. The novelists also believe that their task is not only to inform but also to indicate morality. Samuel Richardson, a novelist, invented a new kind of novel. It stressed psychological and emotional realism. Pamela presents everything in the form of letters composed to the reader by Pamela, and so her feelings and moral crisis are foregrounded for the reader. The epistolary style lends immediacy and intimacy to the story in comparison to Defoe’s fictional narratives, which have ostensibly factual backgrounds.Although Defoe and Richardson differ dramatically in their techniques, both writers helped establish realism as a central feature of the English novel. Defoe focuses on external realism—physical survival, economic management, and moral INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “INTEGRATION OF MODERN LINGUISTICS WITH SCIENCE, EDUCATION, AND PRACTICE IN THE PROCESS OF GLOBALIZATION: NEW APPROACHES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND CHALLENGES”, DECEMBER 4, 2025 284 reflection—while Richardson develops internal realism through emotions, psychological depth, and ethical dilemmas. Defoe tells the story in the first person from the future and reflects on events in a confessional mode, Richardson uses letters so readers sense immediacy, as when Pamela writes about her feelings and situation while they happen. The two novels are different in addition to illustrating how the novel form was versatile in the mid-eighteenth century. Defoe and Richardson helped develop in a common language prose style that could articulate personal experience. They cared about clarity. They acted with honesty. They remained faithful to everyday experience. They set the standard for contemporary prose. They established the novel form. Eighteenth-century novelists wanted to reproduce life as it was lived with all its complexities while earlier writers aspired to grand style and classical rhetoric. The taste for a more natural style also reflected contemporary cultural values. The Enlightenment placed rationality, self-examination and the individual self at the heart of its preoccupations. These writers helped to shape modern subjectivity in literature by opening the door to new forms of writing that focused on personal experience. They set the stage for the early English novel and the tradition that followed. Defoe’s and Richardson’s novels were also channels of exploration on the human, the particular, the individual, the social, and their impact on contemporary novelists and their practices of language and form was far-reaching, in their time and ours. Skilton (1977) considers Robinson Crusoe to be a candidate for the first modern novel because it is one of the earliest. Robinson Crusoe* touches upon themes of Western civilisation, colonialism, and mercantile capitalism during a time when the political and cultural influence of empires was expanding. Crusoe tried to convert Friday to Christianity within the overall project of Western colonialism. In addition, while Defoe did not criticize slavery, the inequality between Crusoe and the subservient Friday reflects assumptions in the 18th century about colonial hierarchies. Crusoe sees Friday as a servant despite accepting Friday as a human. Crusoe’s material possessions are part of his essential philosophy. Crusoe lists everything that belongs to him or that he grows. He lists treasures he finds in shipwrecks as well. His use of terms like "castle" and his claim to be a "king" show how possession, productivity, and power shape his identity Religion plays a role too. Crusoe initially dismisses his father’s religious admonitions, but later considers his own survival to have been due under divine providence. The fact he attempts to convert Friday (while ignoring that Friday has a rational point of view) derives from the British sense of a civilizing mission. Skilton also observes how the use of first-person narration causes the reader to question the reliability of Crusoe’s narrative since the entire narrative is seen through his perspective. Had Friday been the speaker, it would have produced a different effect, and as a result, this use of narration anticipates later novels in the Victorian era, such as Pride and Prejudice (1813), some 100 years after Defoe’s novel. Critical reception of the novel has been mixed. Material wealth plays a central role in Crusoe’s worldview. He frequently describes his possessions, cultivated land, and treasures found in wrecks. His references to his “castle” and his imagined authority as a “king” show how ownership, productivity, and power shape his sense of identity. Religion is another influential force: although Crusoe initially ignores his father’s religious warnings, he later interprets his survival as evidence of divine providence. His insistence on teaching Friday Christianity, while ignoring Friday’s own rational perspective, reflects the British belief that they had a cultural and spiritual duty to “civilise” others. Therefore, material power is an important element as well as religion and faith in the novel. Robinson rejects his father’s advice and religious teachings at the begining of the novel, INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “INTEGRATION OF MODERN LINGUISTICS WITH SCIENCE, EDUCATION, AND PRACTICE IN THE PROCESS OF GLOBALIZATION: NEW APPROACHES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND CHALLENGES”, DECEMBER 4, 2025 285 in order to travel and have some adventure and wealth. Although, his shipwreck can be considered as a moral punishment and his disobedience as a sin, the protagonist did accumulate wealth and did survive at the end of the novel. Thus, the fact that he was punished can be argued and discussed. Robinson’s opinion about religion is very clear. He is a semi-puritan figure and tries to spread his convictions on the island to convert into Christianity. Friday, who is very rational. The hero simply refuses Friday’s own beliefs, thinking that his religion is the best one. This thought may be due to the fact that British people believed that they had a right and a duty to transmit their knowledge, culture and Skilton continues and says that Robinson Crusoe was written in the first-person singular. As a consequence, we constantly have Robinson’s point of view and opinion about the events happening. We have to wonder whether the protagonist, through which the story is described, may be reliable or not, and if we can trust him. If we had Friday’s point of view instead, it is clear that we would have a complete different opinion about Robinson. Probyn states that Chales Gildon, in his book, Defoe’s First Substantive Critic, interpreted Robinson Crusoe as an allegory of Defoe’s Defoe’s own life, but Ian Watt endorses the economic theorists’ view of the novel as illustrating homoeconomicus and the rise of economic individualism. Not everyone insisted on seeing this novel as a metaphor. Conclusion To sum up, there were attempts to write novels, but those attempts were not as much successful, perhaps due to the elements of the work and the style of the work but Defoe and other novelists with the help of reading public, the rise of the middle-class, printing as well as travelling made the emergence of the novel successful. No doubt, the rise of the novel has developed because of the existence of the romance and picaresque noves.The combined social, cultural, and linguistic advances that took place in the eighteenth century brought about in England the rise of the novel, with the work of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson being of great importance in exploring forms of realism, individualism, and narrative modes. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Pamela’ illustrate how the novel form shifted from an external focus on adventure to internal emotional concerns. Their contributions not only shaped the early English novel but also laid the foundation for future literary traditions. The novel became a powerful medium for exploring the human condition, representing personal identity, and engaging with social issues. The works of Defoe and Richardson continue to influence modern fiction, demonstrating the lasting importance of their linguistic and narrative achievements. REFERENCES 1. Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. London, 1719 2. Richardson, Samuel. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. London, 1740. 3. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. University of California Press, 1957. 4. Hunter, J. Paul. Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. Norton, 1990. 5. Richetti, John. The English Novel in History, 1700–1780. Routledge, 1999 6. Rogers, Pat. Defoe: The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures. Yale University Press, 2020. 7. Bowers, Terence. ‘Pamela and the Reform of Popular Fiction.’ Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2009. 8. Andrew Sanders The Short Oxford History of English Literature.Oxford: Oxford University