The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 by Michael McKeon
Published 1987 · 180,000 words · about 15 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 to read?
The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 scores 71 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 72 out of 100
- Dialectical Marxist-inflected academic vocabulary; conceptually dense.
- Sentence structure: 70 out of 100
- Abstraction: 82 out of 100
- The entire argument operates at the level of generic and ideological abstraction.
- Information density: 83 out of 100
- Extraordinarily dense; every paragraph integrates historical, theoretical, and textual material.
- Narrative indirection: 18 out of 100
- The dialectical structure creates a non-linear argumentative movement.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Analytical register.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- The dialectical method carries its own ironic self-awareness.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- The argument is deliberately open-ended at the macro level.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Two-part structure (questions of truth, questions of virtue) with complex internal dialectic.
How The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 is regarded
The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 holds a literary regard score of 86 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.