THE ENLIGHTENMENT (I): ARE THE WORKS OF THE 18th CENTURY WRITERS NOVELS OR FICTION?

the capital, the province, the countryside: the rich were sophisticated and vicious, snobbish, hypocritical, and vain. Hungry and miserable, the poor lived in filthy districts, prisons or insane asylums, unsanitary conditions, factories where children were cruelly exploited, pubs populated by beggars and drunkards.

the monarchy: Queen Anne, 1702‑1714, George I (1714 ‑ 1727), George II (1727 1760, George III (1760 ‑ 1820)

the Parliament, the Whigs and the Tories  

Sir Robert Walpole ( Prime‑Minister between 1715 ‑ 17 and 1721 ‑ 42) or William Pitt the Younger (1783‑ 1801, 1804 ‑ 1806)

free press, impartial justice, tolerance for religious dissenters

the growth of the British Empire

interest in action and reality, rather than in the characters

focus more on the plot than on the characters

characters are personalities with a flat mental cast

comic disposition

frequent contradictions with a society that was apparently disordered and inimical

the honest and moral hero was offered a life of happy fulfillment

travel books, picaresque and quixotic novels, novels of adventures and of manners

a mimetic view: under the sign of the mirror

invitation to embark on a long journey with the author

Captain William Dampier: New Voyage Round the World ‑ 1697, Voyages and Descriptions ‑ 1699, and Voyage to New Holland ‑ 1703

The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719 the myth of the lonely island

Moll Flanders, the first female picaro

Journal of the Plague Year, 1722 the city as a literary character

Preface to Robinson Crusoe:

The story is told with modesty, with seriousness, and with a religious application of events to the uses to which wise men always apply them to the instruction of others by this example, and to justify and honour the wisdom of Providence in all the variety of our circumstances, let them happen how they will.

The editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it. And however thinks, because all such things are disputed, that the improvement of it, as well to the diversion, as to the instruction of the reader, will be the same; and as such, he thinks, without further compliment to the world, he does them a great service in the publication. (p. 7)

The text and comments   available at https://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/17/31/frameset.html

reportorial style

a careful exploitation of details

a swift and resolute narrative rhythm

an impersonal, objective, and plain tone.

aims at concreteness

photographic presentation of shapes

the illusion of verifiable facts

notices, weighs, and measures everything

employs documents, quoted letters, hospital bills

detached and unsentimental

lacks humour

A comic epic poem in prose - Preface to Joseph Andrews (1741)

ridiculous and light plot

a larger circle of incidents

a wider group of characters

people of inferior rank and manners

comic instead of sublime sentiments and diction

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Intellectual Realism - The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

The author:

omniscient point of view

a great faculty of observation, curiosity, tolerance, and sense of humour

a series of simultaneous stories

scenes of action alternate with moments of moral and philosophical debate

comments interrupt the story

numerous allusions to classical writers

double voice

Text available at https://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/22/49/frameset.html, an introduction available at https://www.ruthnestvold.com/tomjones.htm.

fantastic stories, psychological novels, Gothic stories, and historical romances

romantic and effeminate, dealing with sentiments and atmosphere rather than with action

inner crises, fantasies of love, and follies of the imagination

amorous affairs, writing letters, and crying tears of unrequited love

tragic mode

T. G. Smollett, Preface to Roderick Random (1748): clearly distinguishes the difference between the novel and the romance

Walter Scott, the Waverley cycle (1829): no difference between the two genres.

the vagaries of love

the opposition man / woman

introspections and psychological analyses

the supernatural, the fantastic, dreams, hallucinations

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded

Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady

Sir Charles Grandison

combined the realistic tendencies of Defoe with the sentimental pattern based on love tribulations.

about sentiments and addressing sentiments

unity of emotions

plot linked to the sentimental evolution of the characters

characterization through the quality and intensity of feeling

love is the supreme value of life

marriage

Pamela: But then, thought I, how do I know what I may be able to do ? I have withstood his anger; but may I not relent at his kindness? How shall I stand that! Well, I hope, thought I, by the same protecting grace, in which will always confide ! But then what has he promised ? Why he will make my poor father and mothers life comfortable. O! said I to myself, that is a rich thought; but let me not dwell upon it, for fear I should indulge it to my ruin. What can he do for me, poor girl as I am !What can his greatness stoop to ! He talks, thought I, of his pride of heart, and pride of condition ! O these are in his head and in his heart too, or he would not confess them to me at such an instant. Well then, thought I, this can be only to seduce me! (p. 11

Comments on Pamela available at https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6927380

a significant dramatic function of letters

the writing, transmission, and reading of letters is an important and exciting part of the plot

direct contact with the consciousness of the character

the stream‑ of‑consciousness technique: intimate and objective

introspection in the present development of the action together with recollections of past moments and anticipations of the future

alternating different narrative perspectives

writing to the moment

a reduced temporal distance between events and narration

CLARISSA HARLOWE:

That you and I, my dear, should love to write is no wonder. We have always, from the time each could hold a pen, delighted in epistolary correspondences. Our employments are domestic and sedentary, and we can scribble upon twenty innocent subjects, and take delight in them because they are innocent, though were they to be seen, they might not much profit or please others. But that such a gay, lively young fellow as this (Lovelace, a.n.), who rides, hunts, travels, frequents the public entertainments, and has means to pursue his pleasures, should be able to set himself down to write for hours together, as you and I have heard him say he frequently does, that is the strange thing. (p. 33‑34).

All the letters are written while the hearts of the writers must be supposed to be wholly engaged in their subjects (the events at the time generally dubious): so that they abound not only with critical situations, but with what may be called instantaneous descriptions and reflections. (pp. 7‑8).

Gullivers Travels

a book for children or a satire ? Lilliput and Mildendo, Brobdingnag and Lorbrubgrud. The King was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. He was amazed how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation, which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines, whereof, he said, some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.(p. 175)

a political novel ? The Tramecksan and Slamecksan, the Lagado brain transplant. History: a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, masacres, revolutions, banishments, and very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition could produce. (p. 172)

a science‑fiction novel ? Laputa, the Flying Island; Balnibarbi and the Academy of Lagado; Glubbdubdrib, the Island of Sorcerers and Magicians.

a utopia ? The country of the horses: Houyhnhnms and Yahoos.

a book of travels or a parody of it?

realistic indications as to the life of Gulliver

the geographical parameters of the places where he was shipwrecked

the exact dates of his leaving and returning to England (May 4, 1699 ‑ April 13, 1702; June 12, 1702 ‑ June 3, 1706; August 5, 1706 ‑ April 16, 1710; August 7, 17l0 ‑ December 5, 1715)

the matter‑of‑fact style of travel books

numerous misstatements, errors, and jokes

a contradictory and unreliable perspective

introduces odd, grotesque, and wild aspects

irony

There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoke it. (p. 43).

P. Conrad (1987, p. 315): Gullivers Travels is nothing but an encyclopedia of misunderstandings.

the writers laboratory

disobeying traditional rules

puzzling and irritating the reader

under the sign of the labyrinth and the carnival

a variant: meta‑novels under the sign of the pen

comments on the techniques of writing

TRISTRAM SHANDY

delusive title

the inner covers and the preface placed at the middle of the book

action reduced to a few insignificant incidents

tempo slowed down by digressions, descriptions, and tales within tales

blank pages and drawings

written and oral text

the rhetoric of rococo: the curve and the zig‑zag line

influence of Hogarth and the visual arts

digressions: That tho my digressions are all fair, as you observe, ‑ and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and as often too, as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my absence. // By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too, ‑ and at the same time. (I, 22, p. 53).

ludic attitude

chapter 24 in Book IV does not exist, chapter 25 follows immediately after chapter 23.

blank (VI, 39; IX, 18, 19), black (I, 12) or marbled (III, 36) pages

playing games with letters

Chapter XIII

Which shows, let your reverences and worships say what you will of it (for as for thinking ‑ all who do think ‑ think pretty much alike both upon it and other matters) ‑ Love is certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of the most

Agitating

Bewitching

Confounded

Devilish affairs of life ‑ the most

Extravagant

Futilitous

Galligaskinish

Handy‑dandyish

Iracundulous (there is K to it) and

Lyrical of all human passions: at the same time, the most

Misgiving

Ninnyhammering

Obstipating

Pragmatical

Stridulous

Ridiculous ‑ though by the bye the R should have gone first ‑ But in short tis of such a nature, as my father once told my uncle Toby upon the close of a long dissertation upon the subject ‑ You can scarce, said he, combine two ideas together upon it, brother Toby, without an hypallage whats that ? Cried my uncle Toby.

The cart before the horse, replied my father.

And what is he to do there ? Cried my uncle Toby‑

Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in. or let it alone. Now widow Wadman, as I told you before, would do neither the one or the other. She stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points to watch accidents. (VIII, 3)

Text available at https://www.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/TS/contents.html, comments available at https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tristram/

Horace Walpole THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO

Matthew Gregory Lewis AMBROSIO, OR THE MONK (1795)

Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she understood to be Montonis; for, though it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the Gothic greatness of its features, and its mouldering walls, of dark grey stone, rendered it a gloomy and sublime object. As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint which spread deeper and deeper, as the thin vapour crept up the mountain, while the battlements above were still tipped with splendour. From those too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all, who dared to invade its solitary reign. As the twilight deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity, and Emily continued to gaze, till its clustering towers were alone seen rising over the tops of the woods, beneath those thick shade the carriages soon after began to ascend.

The extent and darkness of these tall woods awakened terrific images in her mind, and she almost expected to see banditti start up from under the trees. At length the carriages emerged upon a heathy rock, and, soon after, reached the castle gates, where the deep tone of the portal bell, which was struck upon to give notice of their arrival, increased the fearful emotions that had assailed Emily. (pp. 226‑227).