Introduction
The 18th c novel

What does it mean that “the eighteenth
century novel is an almost meaningless
label”?
‘Generic vagueness’





variety of approaches to novel writing
difficult relationship between the novel and
the romance
generic instability of the novel
dissociation of the novel from the romance
‘mixed modes of narrative discourse’

What kinds of different narrative discourses
came into fashion in the 18th century? Bring
examples.
Narrative discourses






Fictional autobiography (Defoe)
Epistolary novel (Richardson)
Parodic novel (Fielding, Sterne)
Picaresque novel (Smollett)
Philosophical novels (Johnson)
Allegory (Bunyan is still popular in 18th c)

Summarize the differences made between
the “romance” and the “novel” by William
Congreve and Clara Reeve and how this
distinction fits into the development of the
18th century novel and the change of the
taste of readers.
William Congreve’s definition of the
romance:






‘invincible courage of the hero’
‘Mortals of the first rank’
‘lofty language’
‘impossible performances’
‘surprize the Reader’
‘he is forced to be very well convinced that
‘tis all a lye.’
William Congreve’s definition of the
novel:



‘of a more familiar nature’
represents ‘intrigues in practice’
‘not wholly unusual or unpresidented’
Clara Reeve’s definition of the romance:




‘an heroic fable’
‘treats of fabulous persons and things’
‘lofty and elevated language’
‘describes what never happened nor is likely
to happen’
Clara Reeve’s definition of the novel:




‘a picture of real life and manners’
‘a familiar relation of such things as pass
every day before our eyes’
‘represent every scene in easy and natural
manner’
‘appear[s] so probable, as to deceive us into
a persuasion (…) that all is real’
Change in the taste of readers


Female readership is drawn from romances
to novels
The novel provided:



moral and religious (self-)education according to
social expectations
representation of feminine social mobility
sensibility

How did it affect the assumptions about the
nature of “fictional truth” in the work of
several 18th century writers?
Fictional truth


‘lye’, ‘deception’
anxiety of authenticity
Fictional truth (cont)

writer as editor of ‘real’ documents





documents: letters, diaries, autobiographies
Defoe: ‘editor’, ‘private history’, ‘autobiography’
Swift: ‘publisher’s preface’
Richardson: ‘editor’
> ‘private memoirs
Fictional truth (cont)

writer as moral educator





< puritanism (Bunyan)
moral justification
Preface to Pamela: ‘to paint VICE in its proper
colours…to set VIRTUE in its own amiable light’
moral truth (v. factual truth) can be learned from
the novel
> confessions
Fictional truth (cont)

novel as a reminder :



Fielding, ‘comic-epic in prose’
reminding of rather than teaching morals
> satires

Summarize what you have read about the
publishing industry (taste and composition
of readership, journalism, price and number
of copies of books in circulation, libraries,
etc).
Taste and composition of readership

Female readership (upper-middle-class):



Tradesmen (middle-class):



Sentimental fiction (romances)
Religious and moral education (conduct books)
economic considerations
leisure
Workers (lower classes):



rise of literacy
cheap editions
‘democracy of print’ > anxiety of social hierarchy
Journalism

Periodicals:





Spectator, Tatler, Preceptor, The Gentleman’s
Magazine (10,000 copies), Monthly Review,
Critical Review, Blackwoods, etc.
Addison and Steele
Topics of the day: instruction for middle class
60,000 readers daily of the Spectator in London
Newspapers:

The Daily Courant (1707), 3 daily newspapers in
London by 1724 (20,000 daily readers)
Books in circulation






Books as commodities
The Spectator, collected edn (9,000 copies)
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (32,000 copies in a
month, 200,000 copies by 1793)
Booksellers: entrepreneurs
Pope’s Dunciad (2 weeks’ salary)
Andrew Millar (Fielding’s publisher): £100,000
Libraries


Private libraries
Circulating libraries:



Subscribers
Freedom of taste: popular taste
Not recommended for women but decisively
female readers

What does the “feminization” of the novel
mean?
Feminization of the novel

Female readership



assuming female readers (Richardson, Sterne)
female protagonists (Defoe, Richardson, Fielding)
Female writers






majority (Mrs Aphra Behn)
undermining gender roles (patriarchalism) and economic
status (social hierarchy)
‘a generation of amazons of the pen’ (Johnson)
not regarded as ‘serious’ writers by male writers
> rise of 19th c women writers
> rise of feminism in 20th c

How does the gender composition of readers
and writers affect the themes and topics of
18th century novels?
Thematic influence of gender
composition

Romances



not written by ‘serious’ writers
ridiculed (Austen)
Novels




written by ‘serious writers’ for women
female protagonists
novels of sensibility
epistolary novels, autobiographies, allegories

How do the demands of moral instruction
on the one hand and imaginative pleasure
on the other hand define the development
and main concerns of the 18th century novel?
‘Teach and delight’



Ian Watt: novel serves the purposes of the
rising middle class
But: widespread christian literature before
that
Teaching reading skills > teaching christian
morals (‘spreading the Word’); e.g. Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1699)
Imaginative pleasure + moral teaching




Balancing them
The latter is used as justification of the former
Literature is a ‘platform’ for moral improvement
Examples:



Preface to Richardson’s Pamela
Preface to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe: ‘the Improvement of
it, as well to the Diversion, as to the Instruction of the
Reader’
‘moral shape’: literal events aquire allegorical
significance

What was Dr Johnson’s opinion about this?
Dr Johnson’s opinion



Full authority behind Pamela
Tom Jones is a ‘vicious book’
About Tom Jones:

‘entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas,
and therefore easily susceptible of impressions;
not fixed by principles, and therefore easily
following the currents of fancy; not informed by
experience, and consequently open to every false
suggestion and partial account.’

What new sub-genres are brought into life?
New sub-genres





Epistolary novel
Anatomy of feelings
Memoirs
Confessions
Biographies