Political Background to the 18th Century
In 1534, Henry VIII breaks with Rome, having declared himself head of the Church of England.
1. Wants a divorce in order to have a son and heir (Catherine of Aragon can’t have more children), and to marry Anne Boleyn. Catherine’s nephew, Emperor of Spain, takes Rome - Pope afraid to give Henry an annulment.
2. Covets the Church’s wealth and independent power.
3. Avoids the radical individualism and Calvinism of continental protestantism - Anglicanism a middle way, retains a hierarchy leading up to the King.
Under Elizabeth I (1558-1603) the puritans become active - want a more radical protestantism, attack remnants of Catholicism and government of the Church by bishops.
James I and his son Charles I battle with the puritans, who overlap with:
1. The new commercial middle classes.
2. Those who feel that the King should be subject to law and to Parliament.
1642, the Civil War or English Revolution breaks out.
Parliament vs. the Crown
Roundheads vs. Cavaliers
Civil War ends with the victory of Parliament and of the modernizing South-East; Charles I is executed, 1649. Cromwell dissolves Parliament and rules as Lord Protector. Dies in 1658.
1660, the Restoration of Charles’s son, Charles II. Those who refuse to recognize the supremacy of the Crown and the Church of England are called Dissenters and are discriminated against - e.g. cannot attend Oxford or Cambridge or hold public office. But Charles doesn’t turn the clock all the way back.
1685, Charles II dies, succeeded by his brother James II, a Catholic.
Duke of Monmouth, Charles’s bastard son, invades but is defeated at Sedgemoor and executed (1685). Defoe, and Richardson’s father, followers of Monmouth. James II persecutes Dissenters and favors Catholics. Allies himself with Catholic France (Louis XIV) against Protestant Holland.
1688, James II is forced out by William of Orange, his son-in-law. William and Mary rule jointly, as firm Protestants. Childless, succeeded by the Hanoverians, George I, II, III.
The “Glorious Revolution”: supremacy of Parliament over the King, defeat of Catholics, toleration of Dissenters.
Around 1689, the two main political parties of the 18th century form:
Whigs (from Scottish protestant rebels): supporters of the Glorious Revolution, led by liberal aristocrats and commercial magnates. Chief 18th cent whig is the Prime Minister Walpole.
Tories (from Irish Catholic rebels): backwoods landowners, not necessarily Catholic but favor absolute monarchy and the cause of the Stuarts from James I on. Squire Western in Tom Jones a classic Tory. Squire Allworthy is a Whig, like Fielding himself. Chief 18th cent Tory is Bolingbroke, friend of Pope.
Tories favor James II’s son, James Stuart, “The Old Pretender,” who invades in 1715, fails; his son, Charles (“The Young Pretender,” “Bonnie Prince Charlie”) invades in 1745, fails (background to Tom Jones). Tribal society wiped out at Culloden (1746).
THE NOVELWord comes from something new or invented - Boccaccio’s stories in the Decameron (14th cent.).
Notoriously hard to define; evade the question with “prose fiction.”
“a prose narrative of substantial length with something wrong with it.”
“Prose fiction” emphasises the story or narrative element, which goes back to the Greeks and the Old Testament (e.g. Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, Genesis 39). Highly developed in Don Quixote, 100 years before the English novel.
“Novel” emphasises:
a) the embeddedness of the story in a complex and specific social background (Potiphar’s wife story could happen anywhere).
b) the development of character as well as narrative: at least, an emphasis on the examination of motives; at most, action becomes entirely internalised, as in the psychological novel.
On these two conditions, I still believe that the novel is an English invention, rooted in the particular social situation of the earlier 18th century. Continental novel doesn’t catch up until the 19th century.
Why? Perhaps because English society was more commercial and pluralistic than the Continent - more aristocratic and authoritarian there - more mixing of classes and values in England. More on this later.
Further, novel establishes itself in two forms, one founded by Fielding and the other by Richardson:
Novel of plot
Novel of character
Scope: “mores hominum multorum vidit” - ambition is to take in the whole of society - all social classes, different outlooks.
Time: extensive periods of life, changes from youth to maturity, etc.
Space: covers the ground; the country, the city, travel
Economy: All characters and episodes contribute to the plot, nothing wasted.
Orderly or clockwork universe; deterministic - the author is to the work as God is to the created world.
Hence, a reliable moral universe.
In Fielding’s case, fundamentally cheerful vision becuase the author is in control of events. Eupeptic - large appetite for life.
People are driven by clear motives, and are defined by their actions. Hypocrisy the great sin - upsets the moral order by concealing or substituting motives - but the fundamental nature of characters is clear to the author, and is also clear to the reader by the end of the novel.
Examples: Fielding, Smollett, Dickens, Thackeray, Tolstoy.
Focus is not on action, but on states of consciousness - novelist’s task is to explore the inner space, and to “carry the torch to the back of the cave” (Diderot’s description of Richardson). Action is secondary to its underlying mental conditions - it expresses something deeper.
Novelist seeks to inhabit his or her characters, and even to disappear into them altogether - like Keats’s “chameleon poet,” “negative capability.” The epistolary form is perfect for the dramatic (rather than controlling) novelist - but at least the narrator should not be too intrusive, pulling the strings of the action.
Primary concern is with the texture of consciousness, so often there will not be much “going on” - less need for gross external stimuli.
Examples: Richardson, Austen, Dostoevsky, James, Joyce.
All novels have both plot & character, so these are polarities that help to organize our responses - James tries to reconcile the two, but mainly by reducing plot to character (whitening of the knuckles is an action expressing character, but it hardly qualifies as action in Fielding’s sense).
Polarity of masculine & feminine, extrovert & introvert - glory of the form is that great novels can be written about the retreat from Moscow, or about Jane Austen’s “little square of ivory.”
Why England?
Two general theories:
Marxist/economic (Ian Watt): rise of commercial (as opposed to feudal) society creates a middle-class reading public in England. Novel draws strength from both “high” literature (classically-influenced poetry and drama) and “low” popular genres
A “hybridised” or “dialogised” genre, devoted to “circumstantial realism.”
Its subject is “the tension between the middle class and the aristocracy” (Trilling) - the middle ground.
Spiritual Autobiography (Starr):
Interest in charcter and the inner life derives from the puritan emphasis on personal salvation, rejection of church hierarchy.
England’s puritan revolution in the 17th century moves it ahead of the continent -
Spiritual individualism creates the “salvation plot” and a language adequate to inner experience.
Calvinism requires people to think about:
[Both these theories apply more to the novel of character - Fielding rooted in an earlier (mock) epic/ picaresque tradition.]
Reconciliation (McKeon):
Clash of classes and religions leads to epistemological relativism
Secularisation, dialogue, uncertainty, dramatic agon.
Reciprocal causation between economic and spiritual motives reconciles Watt and Starr (i.e. religion & the rise of capitalism).