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The Rise of the Novel in England in the 18th century/ 2: Defoe,Swift, Richardson, Fielding

(Andrea Timár)

Canon: originally: authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture literary canon: works frequently discussed by literary critics and historians, included in anthologies – either in their own time, or by posterity  canon changes, reflects the interests of the age

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

London merchant class, Presbyterian dissenter (separated from Church of England)

writes: political pamphlets, sociological treaties, satirical poems, newspapers, one of the earliest English science fiction: “A Letter from the Man in the Moon” (1706), one of the first ghost stories: “A True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs Veal”” (1706)

Robinson Crusoe (1719): considered to be the fist English novel (unlike: Aphra Behn’s romance: Love Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister, 1684-7) Robinson becomes a proto-novel (Bildungsroman) -> other novels of the time rewrite, and reflect upon its form and its themes

Autobiography: the shape of the novel is determined by the shape of the individual life + the shape of the novel gives shape to the individual life. <- emerging concept of individuality + authorship (copyright <- business + law punishing seditious works, i.e. authors)

First person singular retrospective narration  diff. points of view to interpret the events: narrating present self + narrated past self + implied author + reader (i.e. complex system of points of views). Yet, gives the illusion of confession: 1 point of view.

“themes”: economic individualism” (18th c rise of the middle classes), “confession”: fall, conversion, redemption (<-- spiritual autobiography via St. Augustine), colonisation intertext for J.M. Coetzee: Foe (1996)

A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) –> Albert Camus: The Plague (1947), Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

Moll Flanders(1722)female version of the male Bildungsroman

Full title: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.

questioning of narrative reliability (“sincerity”, “good intentions”, appropriate interpretation of events) <- 1st person narration of the story of younger Moll, related by the seventy-year-old Moll, editorially shaped by Defoe (because of the “Levity and the Looseness that was in it”.) -> Can we believe that Moll dies as a “penitent”? Who is responsible for Moll’s fate? (the Devil?, Moll herself?, Society?)

<- the text is manifold, but its“truth”, “morality”: simple -> the text undermines the message

situation of women in the 18th century: Does society offer Moll any other choice if she wants to become a gentlewoman? Plus: Moll is almost like a man <- freedom to shape her own life by her own means: prostitution (moneymaking) + storytelling -> proto-feminist

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) poet, pamphleter, novelist, satirist

Born in Dublin, Ireland, as Protestant, TrinityCollege, settles down in England

A Tale of a Tub (1699)

The Battle of Books (1704): quarrel of “ancients” and “moderns” -> intertext for Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy, Ch. “Sweetness and Light” (1869)

A Modest Proposal (1829): let’s eat up Irish children - model of irony: saying >-< meaning

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) (original t:Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, publ. anonymously)? satirises the many stupidities of the British + ironic commentary on Robinson Crusoe: Gulliver ends up preferring his horse to his fellow men.

“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it” (Swift) (-> satirist: self-appointed guardian of standards, satire a form of protest)

-- satire upon 18th c. Engl. soc + on theme and form of Robinson Crusoe

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): “father of the English novel” (A. L. Barbauld, ed. of R’s letters + famous critique of S.T. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

<- focus on private, generally female, subjectivity -> not outside, but inner world.

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1747-48), Sir Charles Grandison (1753-54).

Pamela <- grows out of a “conduct book”. -> “epistolary novel”: composed of letters written by Pamela (servant girl in Mr. B’s aristocratic household), which tell about P’s own experience of her situation (i.e Mr.B.’ relentless attempts to seduce her) -> complete reality effect, “the truest” confession <- narrating self (almost!) equals narrated self

women’s writing (P. the “scribbling woman”): secrecy (P. writes in secret) + self-assertion (speaks her own voice and becomes an agent in her own life through resisting Mr. B.) -> P’s empowerment  way to liberation, emancipation

Battle bw. P. and B. for the possession of P’s body, then, for P’s letters

P quotes Mr: B: “I have searched every place above, and in your closet, for them [the letters], and cannot find them; so I will know where they are. Now, said he, it is in my opinion they are about you; and I never undressed a girl in my life; but I will now begin to strip my pretty Pamela; and I hope I shall not go far before I find them.”

=> Mr. B. eventually reads P’s letters -> B’s “conversion” -> B. marries P.--> P. finds her “true place” in soc. -> socially subversive. (the servant maid marries a lord)

+ Mr. B. becomes a good man of feeling (middle class virtue) because of reading P’s letters -> new ideal of the 18th-19th c.-> the novel shapes reality

-> both female and male Bildungsroman

However: epistolary form: reality effect: narrative reliability questionable (!) ->

Henry Fielding (1707-1754): parodies of Pamela. An Apology for the life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, In which many notorious Falsehoods and Misrepresentations of a Book called ‘Pamela’, are exposed and refuted (1741), The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams (1742)

Fielding: first a prolific and successful writer of comedies, satirical plays criticising the government of Robert Walpole (1736–37). 1737: “Stage Licensing Act”: closes down all non-patent theatres <- partly due to plays like Fielding’s, and John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728)

-> Fielding: lawyer, journalist, novelist.

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1729), a comic epic in prose

Use of stage routines + ironic comment on the “genre” of Bildungsroman,

1. mistrust of individualism -> third person narrative

(except: episodes on Mrs Fitzpatrick and “The Man of the Hill”: 1st person narrative: parodic Robinson, self-centred individualism, eventually, misanthropy)

->represents identity as a social fact, no introspection, character defined by actions and social interactions -> plot defines the character (picaresque trad.)

-> no discovery of true self, but recovery of origins.

2. mistrust of autobiography -> Parabasis: interruptive, direct address to the audience/reader by the 3d person narrator -> destroys the illusion of reality in fiction + draws attention to narrating itself -> forces an ironic self-reflection upon the reader who is used to getting immersed into fiction and identify with characters (cf: Reeve’s def. of novel)

V, 10. “Some of my Readers may be inclined to think this Event unnatural. However, the fact is true; and, perhaps, may be sufficiently accounted for, by suggesting that Jones probably thought one Woman better than none, and Molly as probably imagined two Men to be better than one. Besides, the before-mentioned Motive assigned to the present behavior of Jones, the reader will be likewise pleased to recollect in his Favour, that he was not at this Time perfect master of that wonderful Power of Reason, which so well enables grave and wise Men to subdue their unruly Passions, and to decline any of these prohibited Amusements. Wine now had totally subdued this Power in Jones.”

3. conscious construction (as opposed to the alleged confessional flow of 1st person narratives):

Fielding is a “master of construction” (S. T. Coleridge): parallel episodes from diff. points of view, pairings of contrasted characters no single truth

Part One
i, 2 – vi, 11
21 years
Country
Paradise Hall
Tom and Molly Seagrim
(IV-VI)
Tom separated from Sophia (VI) / Part Two
vi, 12 – xii, 14
10 days
Road
Upton episode
(IX-X)
Tom and Mrs Waters
(IX-X) / Part Three
xiii, 2—xviii, 13
1 month
City
Lady Bellaston’s house
Tom and Lady Bellaston
(XIII-XV)
Tom rejoins Sophia
(XIII)

A Tale of Tub is a satire, Tub stands for Pulpit, divided up between sections of digression and “tale”. Yet, digressions, with titles like Digression on madness, simply overwhelm the tale and the two end up intermingling: the tale itself becomes a digression. The tale is the allegory of three brothers with ordinary names, who try to find their way in the world. They represent the three branches of Christianity, which are all parodied: the Dissenters, the Catholics and the EnglishChurch,. There is no unifying narrative voice, we cannot really know the narrator’s own opinion.