Reader's Log 3B

The novel as we know it is a long prose narrative based upon imagination rather than historical actuality. It is generally realistic though allowing for fantasy too in several important sub-species. It appeared in numerous examples from the middle of the 18th century onward. The following list names the most important novelists of the neoclassical era and an important work by each.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731). Moll Flanders (1722). This is one of the earliest treatments of a fallen woman, Moll Flanders being required to earn her living by attaching herself as a mistress successively to men of varying degrees of wealth and kindness.

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). Pamela ( 1741). This is an epistolary novel, a long series of letters. In it a rural girl, whose virtue is constantly assaulted by a lecherous young gentleman who has hired her as a servant, succeeds in not only fending him off but in gradually converting him to virtue. In the end they marry. As you might expect, the subtitle of this novel is Virtue Rewarded.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754). Tom Jones (1749). This is a very long work about a goodnatured but libidinous young man. It is composed of numerous brief chapters in which good humored satire mingles with morality and aesthetic purpose.

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768). Tristram Shandy (1761). The rambling plot of this novel is full of whimsical characters. Thus, while it doesn't give you much by way of a story line, it reveals a good deal about mid 18th century life.

Horace Walpole (1717-1797). The Castle of Otranto ( 1764). This is the first horror novel, a genre which is also called the Gothic novel.

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771). The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771). This is a wonderfully comic treatment of a summer tour through the English countryside by a middle class English family, whose servants as well as the genteel personalities figure in the action.

Jane Austen (1775-1817). Pride and Prejudice (1813). Though Jane Austen's novels were published during the Romantic Era, they are thoroughly Neoclassical in their satiric treatment of manners among the gentry of rural England. It is, in fact, Austen's novels which define what we now call the novel of manners, a genre that achieves in fiction what the comedy of manners achieves in drama. You will be asked a little later in the semester to do a Web search for sites dealing with Jane Austen or offering electronic versions of some of her novels. You will be a bit overwhelmed with the richness and diversity of materials about and by Austen. She remains one of the outstanding novelists in the English language.

Jonathan Swift: Master of Irony, Disillusioned Idealist:

Read the editors' introduction to Swift, pp. 966-967.

An Anglican clergyman born in Ireland of English stock, Swift succeeded in escaping his native Ireland for only brief periods. During these periods he established life-long friendships with the greatest English authors of the Augustan Age, and he himself became one of the most notable among them. Many scholars rank Swift as one of the two greatest writers of the Augustan Age, the other being Pope, a close friend of Swift's. It was Swift who, temporarily in England, founded the Scriblerus Club, dedicated to the mockery of writers of pretentious mediocrity. Swift engaged in many of the literary controversies of his age. His Tale of a Tub (1704) treated the conflict between Anglicans, Catholics, and Dissenters with comic irony. His Battle of the Books (1704) entered the controversy over the Ancients and Moderns, a debate whether classical literature was superior or inferior to English literature of the 18^th century. Swift also wrote polemical essays for English political periodicals and for a time published an Irish weekly called The Intelligencer.

Swift's greatest gift was irony, for which he is the acknowledged master among writers in the English language. Look up irony in your glossary or dictionary. Swift employed irony for the comic purpose of correcting the general follies of society and for the polemical purpose of influencing the policies of government both in England and in Ireland. Swift also had a penchant for the repulsive and the scatological. Scatology refers to words and images having to do with excrement. The fierce disgust of Swift's scatological poems suggests that he hated filthiness and squalor above almost all other human failings. There is also in Swift's later works a tone of bitter disillusionment that suggests he expected human beings to behave much better than they were generally capable of behaving. The Neoclassical Era is sometimes called the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason because many well educated persons believed that the advance of knowledge which had begun with the Renaissance would engage the faculty of reason in the mass of humanity and turn them into lovers of peace and virtue. As we will see, Swift's masterpiece, Gulliver's Travels, debunks this expectation with scathing irony. Yet Swift also possessed deep sympathy for the poor and ordinary among humanity and became revered by the disenfranchised Irish Catholics for his attempts to influence an often exploitative English policy in their behalf. It must be remembered, too, that as an Anglican clergyman, Swift ministered to the spiritual needs of a congregation in the Irish cathedral where he was dean. Swift's sermons, preached to ordinary people, were simple, sincere statements of Christian doctrine totally devoid of irony and disillusionment.

READER'S LOG. A Description of a City Shower, pp.967-969 . Read this poem closely. It pretends to be a georgic, a kind of classical poem celebrating the beauties of country life. Obviously it is a mock georgic which selects mundane, ugly details to characterize a city storm. Swift senses all too keenly the disparity between the idealized descriptions of much literature and the ugliness of the actual urban environment. (You will recall that Hogarth's representations show that the mass of Londeners lived in sordid, ugly surroundings.) For your response, explain the not so poetic simile referring to clouds and rain in line 16.

READER'S LOG. A Description of a City Shower, pp.967-969. In a sentence or two, generalize from lines 53-63 on what one might see in flooding city gutters.

READER'S LOG. A Modest Proposal, pp. 1113-1119. Read this essay carefully. Read the editors' introductory note # 1, page 1113. Please do not take this essay at face value, and do not believe for an instant that Swift the author endorses the horrifying policy that his fictional persona propounds. This essay is probably the most famous example of irony in the English language. Claiming to provide an innocent and humane solution to the chronic problem of overpopulation in Ireland, this supposed political arithmetician (an 18^th century term for a statistical economist) proposes that year-old infants of the Irish poor should be sold and slaughtered for human consumption. This obviously inhumane measure underscores the almost equal inhumanity of absentee English landlords and repressive English policies in Ireland. It will help to know that Catholic Ireland was conquered by Protestant England in the 16^th century. Protestant immigrants from Scotland settled in northern Ireland, setting the scene for the bloody guerilla warfare that continues there even today. In southern Ireland, the Catholic land-owning classes were exterminated and replaced by English gentry, many of whom resided in England on rents their stewards collected from the Catholic Irish farmers who tilled their lands. Although Swift himself was an Anglican descended from the occupying English gentry, he recognized the gross injustice inherent in the English treatment of the Irish. In the short paragraph in the upper middle of p.1114, Swift has his fictional political arithmetician claim that his proposal will have the advantage of discouraging the horrid practice of abortion. What is ironic about this claim?

READER'S LOG. A Modest Proposal, pp. 1114-1115. What valuable information has the author learned from a "very knowing American"?

READER'S LOG. A Modest Proposal, pp. 1117-1118. In the long paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 1117, the author, having asserted that his proposal is for Ireland only, vigorously rejects the idea of resorting to "other expedients," which he then proceeds to list in italics. This list of course includes precisely the remedies to Ireland's poverty that Swift actually believes in. Name a number of these remedies.

Gulliver's Travels, pp. 969-1113.

Read the editors' introduction, pp. 969-970. You may defer reading the supposed statements by Gulliver and his publisher Sympson, pp. 970-973, till after reading the narrative itself, when their irony will be more apparent.

This, Swift's best known work, is a novel in the modern sense of the term, being a long imaginative narrative in prose. It pretends to be a collection of travel narratives, which had been a popular genre in England from the earliest explorations of the New World. In this work, Swift has adopted the persona of a ship's doctor, Lemuel Gulliver. A persona is an invented personality whose writings are supposedly fact rather than fiction. Swift liked to use a persona, as we saw from his pretense that he was a political arithmetician in A Modest Proposal. The work is divided into four parts, each of which pretends to be an account of Gulliver's involuntary stay in a far away country where he has been stranded by shipwreck.

As Swift wrote in a letter to Pope, his intent in this work was satirical. What distinguishes the satire in this work is the tone of bitter disillusionment which it reaches, especially in Part 4. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms. Scholars are still very much divided on the question whether Swift felt the depths of disillusionment with human nature reached by his persona, Lemuel Gulliver, or whether he intended that Gulliver himself be an object of ridicule for having allowed himself to reach such a depth of disillusionment.

As you will see in A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver's disillusionment arises from the inability of human beings to live up to the dictates of reason. The Neoclassical Era, sometimes called the Age of Reason, tended to exalt reason as a panacea for curing all the ills of the world. There was a wide spread faith that reason, awakened through education and learning, would make human beings both wise and virtuous. Many of Swift's readers, believing Gulliver represented his creator's own disillusionment, believed Swift had gone too far with a bitter denial of their cherished faith in the human capacity for rational behavior. We may well ask whether Swift indeed was so excessively sensitive and idealistic that in his thinking the vices and follies of humanity totally overshadowed its virtues and graces.

Gulliver's Travels, Part 1: A Voyage to Lilliput, pp. 974-1012.

Browse in this narrative, being sure to read the prefatory summaries of each chapter and sampling the comparison Swift makes between the diminutive Lilliputians and their English and European counterparts. This first part of Swift's book is well known. It appeals to readers of all levels, and children's versions of it are common. In it, Gulliver is shipwrecked in a land inhabited by the tiny Lilliputians. At first imprisoned, he soon enters the good graces of the Emperor and is made privy to the politics of the land. Envy and intrigue in the Emperor's court finally force him to flee. His naive anecdotes and descriptions highlight the extravagance and malevolence characterizing the ruling classes of England and Europe.

READER'S LOG: A Voyage to Lilliput, pp. 989-990. Notice the extravagant grandeur attributed to the Emperor in the formal decree stipulating the conditions of Gulliver's freedom beginning near the bottom of p. 989. Given the diminutive scale of the Emperor and his dominions, do you think Swift intends us to take this attribution of grandeur seriously? What does this ironic contrast imply about Swift's attitude toward the attribution of a similar grandeur in decrees of English and European monarchs in Swift's time?

Gulliver's Travels, Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag, pp. 1012-1054.

Browse in this narrative, being sure to read the prefatory summaries of each chapter and sampling Gulliver's experiences among a race of giants. Again saved from shipwreck on a distant shore, Gulliver is discovered by a farmer, sold to the queen of the land, and placed into the protection of a maid servant. Swift again uses the difference in scale between these fictitious people and his English compatriots to make a satirical commentary on the practices and attitudes of the latter.

READER'S LOG: A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Chapter 4, pp. 1030-1031. Summarize Gulliver's emotional reaction to the sight of enlarged lice on giant beggars, as noted in the paragraph bridging these two pages. It may interest you to know that drawings of a flea and other minute creatures and objects as seen under a microscope had been published in 1665 by Robert Hooke under the auspices of the Royal Society in a book named Micrographia Or Some Physiological Descrption of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquires thereupon.

READER'S LOG: A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Chapter 6, pp. 1039-1043. In this passage, Gulliver attempts to persuade the king of the virtues and achievements of his native land. Unimpressed, the king begins a line of inquiry that undermines Gulliver's assertions. Note on p. 1041 that the king indirectly points out the failures and vices of English politics and law through a series of questions beginnings with "Whether." From the final paragraph on p. 1043 list the negative qualities that the king says are the "ingredients for qualifying a legislator."

Gulliver's Travels, Part 3: A Voyage to Laputa, pp. 1054-1067.

In this episode, Gulliver is rescued from shipwreck by the residents of a flying island in the vicinity of Japan. On this island live a race of absurdly impractical inventors and scientists, through whom Swift ridicules the Royal Society. The Royal Society was chartered by Charles II in 1667 for the purpose of advancing scientific knowledge. Sir Isaac Newton, who described the laws of gravity and the orbits of the planets, was its president for many decades. In hindsight, it would appear that Swift failed to grasp the full implications of the science of his own time. It is likely that, in light of the enormous progress experimental science has made, the modern reader finds this the least funny of the four parts of Swift's book.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to Laputa, Chapter 3, pp. 1054-1055. Describe the unusual instrument used to attract the attention of the better class of citizens. What does this imply about their touch with reality?

Gulliver's Travels, Part 4. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, pp. 1067-1113.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 1, pp. 1067-1071. Read this chapter carefully, for it introduces both the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms. Quote the sentence from the upper middle of 1069 beginning with, "Upon the whole...," which summarizes Gulliver's ingrained, unchanging attitude toward the Yahoos. Notice that at this point he does not think of these creatures as human. Later he will.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 1, p. 1070. From the last paragraph on this page, determine what quality is it that at first persuades Gulliver that these horses must be human magicians in disguise.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 3, pp. 1075-1078. From the lower half of p. 1076 and the top half of p. 1077, name the secret that Gulliver begs his master Houyhnhnm to keep from the other horses.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 4, pp. 1078-1081. Gulliver has at last acquired enough of the Houyhnhnms' language that he and his master can discourse at length. During this and a number of following chapters Gulliver will attempt to explain human nature as he knows it from the civilized nations of Europe. His master, alternately puzzled and contemptuous, learns of the numerous ways in which Gulliver's fellow Europeans fail to live up to the dictates of reason in which they claim to believe. Gulliver, for his part, observes the perfectly rational behavior of the Houyhnhnms. From the first and last paragraphs of Chapter 4, tell why Gulliver has difficulty in making his master understand the nature of the vices commonly practiced by human beings.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 5, pp. 1081-1085. Gulliver here attempts to explain the nature of warfare to his master, who, being reasonable, again has great difficulty in understanding it. Briefly summarize the trivial causes of war as Gulliver explains them in the first paragraph of p.1082.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 5, p. 1083. Gulliver's master reaches a conclusion he will express elsewhere as well. Quote the last two sentences of the long paragraph in the middle of this page.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 6, pp. 1085-1089. In this chapter Gulliver attempts to explain the extravagancies of clothing and diet among Europeans and the inconsistencies and infirmities of their chief governing officials. From the last paragraph, p. 1086, summarize briefly the causes of ill health among human beings which Gulliver cites.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 7, pp. 1089-1093. During this and the next chapter Gulliver comes to the unalterable conviction that he indeed belongs to the same species as the Yahoos. From the last paragraph on p. 1089, summarize the decision regarding his own future that Gulliver makes in light of this conviction.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 8, pp. 1093-1097. Gulliver here and in the next chapter as well describes the customs and virtues of the Houyhnhnms, who live in a Utopia of pure rationality. (A Utopia is any ideal or theoretical society, so called from a book of that title written by Sir Thomas More in the early English Renaissance. Swift refers to More's book a number of times in Gulliver's Travels.) From the paragraph at the bottom of p. 1095 and top of p. 1096, summarize the Houyhnhnms' practice of love and affection.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapters 9, 10, and 11, pp. 1097-1109. In these chapters Gulliver is banished from among the Houyhnhnms for fear he will corrupt the local Yahoos and incite them to rebellion. He has received news of his banishment with grief and distress for he no longer has any tolerance for his own kind, in whom he will forever see the basic traits of the vile Yahoos. In Chapter 11, he can scarcely repress his repugnance for the kindly Portugese captain, Don Pedro, who rescues him. From p. 1107, quote one of several sentences expressing this repugnance.

READER'S LOG. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 11, pp. 1108-1109. From the final two paragraphs of this chapter, summarize Gulliver's reactions to his home and family.

READER'S LOG. A Letter from Captain Gulliver to His Cousin Sympson, pp. 970-973. First read the final paragraph of your editors' introduction to Gulliver's Travels, in the middle of p. 970. There you will see that the book was first published anonymously in 1726 in a censored condition because the publisher believed offended readers might bring criminal charges against Swift. When the book was republished in 1735, Swift insisted that it be according to his original text, and he included this supposed letter from Gulliver to a fictitious publisher. Quote several sentences from this letter that show that Gulliver continues in his utter disillusionment with human kind.