The Rise of Novel in 18 th century

The late 16 and early 17 centuries - a golden age of drama
the early 18th century -a golden age of satire
the middle and late period of the 18 century - a golden age of fiction.

After the Restoration
In journalism, the periodical essay developed, commenting on public manners and values.
To satisfy the reading tastes of a developing middle class, writers began to experiment with long fictional narratives called novels.
Theaters closed by the Puritans reopened, and female actors were now included on the stage; drama during the Restoration period was witty, bawdy, and cynical.

Causes of the rise of English novel
a new mass literacy
Urbanization
technological advances in printing

Emergence of English Novel
The modern European novel began after the Renaissance, with Cervantes’s Don Quixote(1605-1615).
The modern English novel began two centuries later, in the 18th century.
The rise and growth of the realistic novel is the most prominent achievement of 18th century English literature

Different styles of novel writing
Satire
Realistic novel
Social moralizing novel
Sentimental novel
Gothic Novels

Realism
Realism is a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording life as it really is without sentimentalizing or idealizing it.
The novelists of this group told the reader in their novels about the ordinary people, about their thoughts, feelings and struggles.
The realist novelists of this century are Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Tobias George Smollett.

He’s …
one of Ireland’ s most famous man;
a patriot;
political activist;
a ladies’ man;
someone who makes you laugh, who makes you cry.

Born in Ireland in 1667 - Dublin into a family of Dissenters
Trinity College in Dublin
Suffered from Ménière's disease
MA from Oxford in 1692
Became an Anglican priest in 1695
He was active in the early debates of the political parties in England—Whigs and Tories

Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer
bitterly disappointed - stoked his anger
his serious writing career began, nurtured by that anger
the most political of the 18 -century satirists (Tory)
Swift is most famous for his satires
He wanted to make people think by using humor.

Between 1689 and 1699 he worked as a private secretary to a distant kinship Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat.
And there he also received a first-rate education in politics through contact with Temple and many other well-known politicians, learning much about hypocrisy, deception and corruption in the political world.

Major works
Gulliver's Travels,
A Modest Proposal,
A Journal to Stella,
The Drapier's Letters,
The Battle of the Books,
A Tale of a Tub

Ireland falls in poverty and overpopulation.
What is the present situation in Ireland?

What is Swift’s proposal?

The advantages of the proposal
it would greatly lessen the number of Papists
the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own
the money gained from transaction will circulate in the country
their breeders will benefit from it directly
this food would bring great custom to taverns
this would be a great inducement to marriage

Further
a friendship with Alexander Pope
1713, the Scriblerus Club
who could write the wittiest satires ???
Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels and Satire
Gulliver’s Travels is a parody of the genre of “travel narrative”
During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these tales of voyages of exploration and colonial adventure were extremely popular:
Christopher Columbus
Amerigo Vespucci
Sir Walter Raleigh
Captain John Smith

Terrific political satire
Totally fantastical world
Gulliver – gullible (легковерный)
Swift (Irish) – Gulliver (Englishman) – Parody of Travel Books (people started travelling & writing – with lies – about their trips)

Brobdingnag

four books
Lilliput - satirized the court around Queen Anne
rural giants Brobdingnag (hated progress, the most traditional)
Laputa (Spanish for “whore”), a scientific utopia (Swift also loathed science ), Struldbrugs, who live forever and decay forever
Houyhnhnm Land (the rulers are horses, and homo sapiens are horrific apes, Lemuel Gulliver seems to go mad)

Lilliputs: war-faring & blood-thirsty nation
6 inches tall
The emperor believed himself to be the delight and terror of the universe, but it appeared quite absurd to Gulliver who was twelve times as tall as he.
Gulliver gets lots of restrictions, has to serve the emperor & participate in the war
2 wars:
At home - high heels or low heels???
Outside (with Belfuscu): what end of the egg should it be cracked on???

Brobdingnagians – Gentle Giants
people are not only ten times taller and larger than ordinary human beings, but also superior in wisdom.
King listens to Gulliver’s stories about England & is amazed at all the evil, corruption, wars, etc.
Gulliver wants to tell the King how to make the gunpowder to kill people – King is appalled & disgusted

Laputa
visit to the flying Island, where the philosophers and projectors devote all their time and energy to the study of some absurd problems. Their scientists are engaged in projects for exacting sunbeams out of cucumbers, turning ice into gunpowder and making cloth from cobweb.
Struldbruggs who offer eternal life but become progressively senile in doing so.

"Their heads were all reclined either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars, interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many more instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe.

I observed here and there many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the end of a short stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas or little pebbles (as I was afterwards informed). With these bladders they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning; it seems, the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing."

Houyhnhnm
Horses are superior to mankind
Gulliver learns about brilliant simplicity of horses’ culture in which there’s no need for war, clothes, money, doctors, judges
Yahoos are obsessed by the colored stones they find in the dirt (gaining wealth!!!). They are malicious, spiteful, envious, unclean and greedy.

Writing features
language is simple, clear and vigorous.
In simple direct and precise prose, Swift is almost unsurpassed in English literature.

Life
Born into a family of Dissenters in 1660.
Studied modern languages, economics, geography, besides the traditional subjects.
Queen Anne had him arrested, tried and imprisoned.
Became a secret agent for the new government.
Involved in Monmouth rebellion in 1685 against James II
Supporter of William of Orange in the ‘Glorious Revolution’
Near the end of his life he returned to the Tories
Wrote over 500 books, pamphlets, and journals on politics, crime, religion, geography, marriage, psychology, and the super natural
Started to write novels when was about sixty.
Died in 1731

one of the founders of the English novel
a productive and versatile writer: about five hundred books
pamphlets
journals
Various topics like politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural

First published in 1719
Story of a castaway who spent 28 years on a remote island
Inspiration: sailor Alexander Sirkirk
Inspired a new genre called the “Robinsonade”

literary representation known as realism
“bourgeois epic” - the middle-class hero, homo economicus
the island (The ideal place for Robinson to prove his qualities; organizes a primitive empire, the sovereign of his island ) - the English Crown
spiritual aspect (Full of religious references to God, sin, providence, salvation)

Plot summary
Crusoe sets sail in September 1651
his ship is wrecked by a vicious storm
he sets out to sea again
the ship is taken over by Salé pirates
becomes the slave of a Moor
befriends with the captain of a Portuguese ship
Crusoe becomes owner of a plantation in Brazil

Plot summary
joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa
shipwrecked in a storm again
in September 30, 1659
keeps himself alive
discovers native cannibals
rescues Friday
they are saved by English mutineers
leaves the island December 19th, 1686

MATURE ENLIGHTENMENT.
social moralizing novel
Samuel Richardson
Henry Fielding
Tobias Smollett (The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker and other novels)

Born in Derbyshire in 1689.
one of a family of nine children
a printer by trade (he thought it would give him ample time to read)
became a novelist due to his skill as a letter-writer. One of his favorite things to do was help people in his community write letters of correspondence.
Was asked to produce what was known as a conduct book to help teach rural individuals about manners, social graces and the like.
CONDUCT BOOKS were lists of instructions to the reader on how to lead a good, moral life.
The author of the first bestseller!

EPISTOLARY NOVEL
novels written as series of letters
lets you clearly see characters' motivations and their development
allows the author to present a complex main character - the letter allowed the reader greater access to a character's thoughts
brings a sense of immediacy to the work. In an epistolary novel, characters are typically recording things more or less as they happen or shortly after they occur.

The plot of Pamela
Pamela Andrews is a beautiful young and innocent country girl who works as a maid for a man - Mr. B.
Mr B becomes obsessed with beautiful Pamela and makes several attempts to seduce her.

Mr. B at the summer house

Mr. B interrupts Pamela while writing

The first attack at Bedfordshire

Pamela undresses for bed, while the heavy-breathing Mr. B/ Nan watches

Mrs. Jewkes, Pamela & Mr. Williams

Don't your heart ache for me?—I am sure mine fluttered about like a new-caught bird in a cage. O Pamela, said I to myself, why art thou so foolish and fearful? Thou hast done no harm! What, if thou fearest an unjust judge, when thou art innocent, would'st thou do before a just one, if thou wert guilty? Have courage, Pamela, thou knowest the worst! And how easy a choice poverty and honesty is, rather than plenty and wickedness.

Why popular?
A conduct book - main character remains chaste and pure despite numerous trials, temptations and people trying to take her virtue from her
she turns Mr. B into a better person, who eventually sees the error of his ways and does the right thing
Pamela is noted for challenging traditional notions of class - a lower-class girl marry wealthy man

country gentry
Eton –classical education
a lawyer and a magistrate
Shamela (1742)
The History of Joseph Andrews (1742)
Tom Jones

PARODY
A literary work that imitates the characteristic style of an author for comic effect or ridicule.

Like Pamela, Shamela is a collection of letters, mostly between Shamela and her mother.
In Shamela instead of trying to preserve her virtue, Shamela is trying to trick her master into marriage.

Joseph Andrews
is supposed to be the brother of Richardson’s Pamela.
He uses her as inspiration for his own VIRTUE.
Like Pamela he is a servant, and he must resist the advances of his mistress.
His mistress is supposed to be the aunt of Pamela’s husband Mr. B

BOOK TWO
Joseph sets out from the house to travel from London to his home town where his fiancée Fanny lives.
mugged and beaten and taken to an inn where he meets his friend Parson Adams.
Meanwhile Fanny has set out to come to London to see Joseph.
Parson Adams saves Fanny from being attacked and then her attackers accuse them of robbery. They are almost arrested but manage to escape.
Joseph, Parson Adams and Fanny are reunited.

BOOK THREE
Mr. Wilson
three year old son was stolen from the garden.
BOOK FOUR
Lady Booby has also arrived in the parish.
Her nephew arrives having married Pamela.
A peddler arrives in the village claiming that Fanny was a child stolen from Joseph and Pamela’s parents as a child.
Fanny and Joseph = brother and sister!!

Joseph’s parents arrive and his mother reveals that Fanny was stolen, but Joseph was left behind in her place.
Joseph is the long-lost son of Mr. Wilson!!!
Joseph and Fanny are married.

Fanny, Joseph and Parson Adams are all virtuous characters in a world of cheats and liars.
Even though it is a parody, Fielding, like Richardson is instructing the reader on how to be a good person.

LATE ENLIGHTENMENT (SENTIMENTALISM) (1750 - 1780)
Oliver Goldsmith (November 10, 1730 or 1728 - April 4, 1774)
“wonderfully sentimental” novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
Richard Sheridan (School for Scandal and other plays).

Sentimentalism
the tendency to be governed by feelings instead of reason
Sentimentalism asserted that over-shown feeling was not a weakness but rather showed one to be a moral person.
The literary work often featured scenes of distress and tenderness, and the plot was arranged to advance emotions rather than action.

the most mischievous, eccentric writer of fiction
North Country parson
the most stylish and rhetorically brilliant Anglican preachers of his time
“spiritual adulteries”

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
began to appear in 1759
nine volumes, published over 10 years
the story of the whole of Tristram’s life
progressive, digressive