Laurence Sterne - some notes

 From the Short Oxford Companion to English Literature:

 

STERNE, Laurence (1713-68), educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he embraced the philosophy of *Locke and made a lifelong friend of *Hall-Stevenson, who was probably the model for *Eugenius. He took holy orders and obtained the living of the Yorkshire parish of Sutton-on-the-Forest in 1738. In 1741 he married Elizabeth Lumley. In 1759 he began *Tristram Shandy, Vols I and II being published in that year. This work brought him fame and success, although Dr. *Johnson, *Richardson, *Goldsmith, and others criticized it on both literary and moral grounds. He went to London and he was fêted by society, had his portrait painted by *Reynolds, was invited to Court. He published The Sermons of Mr Yorick (1760), a volume whose title caused some scandal, and in 1761 four more volumes of Tristram Shandy appeared. Meanwhile Sterne's health was deteriorating steadily. In 1762 in the hope of improvement he and his wife and daughter left for France. Sterne returned alone to England in 1764, and in 1765 published Vol VII and VIII of Tristram Shandy; Vol IX  appeared in 1767. In 1765 he returned to France and undertook an eight-month tour of France and Italy, which clearly provided him with much of the material for *A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). In 1766 he published two further volumes of sermons. In 1767 Sterne met and fell in love with Elizabeth *Draper, and began his Journal to *Eliza. He died of tuberculosis in London in March 1768. 

A spate of forgeries appeared after Sterne's death, including another volume of Tristram Shandy, Posthumous Works,  and a continuation by 'Eugenius' (an author whose identity is not known, but who was not Hall-Stevenson) of A Sentimental Journey. 

Sterne is generally acknowledged as an innovator of the highest originality, and has been seen as the chief begetter of a long line of writers interested in the *'stream-of-consciousness'. He acknowledges in Tristram Shandy his  own debt in this respect to *Locke. Throughout his work he parodies the developing conventions of the still-new 'novel', and its problems in presenting reality, space, and time. His sharp but often salacious wit is balanced by the affection he displays towards the delights and absurdities of life.

Tristram Shandy, The Life and Adventures of, by L. Sterne, published 1759-67.

This unique work, although itself the culmination of experiments by lesser authors, is generally regarded as the progenitor of the 20th-cent. *stream-of-consciousness novel. It owes much to *Rabelais, to Robert *Burton, and to Locke's *Essay concerning Human Understanding. The word 'shandy', of obscure origin, means 'crack-brained, half-crazy', and Tristram in Volume VI of his book declares that he is writing a 'civil, nonsensical, good humoured Shandean book'.

In spite of the title, the book gives us very little of the life, and nothing of the opinions, of the nominal hero, who is born only in Vol IV, and breeched in Vol. VI, and then disappears from the story. Instead we have a group of humorous figures: Walter Shandy of Shandy Hall, Tristram's father, 'my Uncle Toby', his brother, wounded in the groin at the siege of Namur, whose hobby is the science of attacking fortified towns, Corporal Trim, his servant, wounded in the knee at Landen, devoted to his master. Behind these three major figures the minor characters, Yorick the parson, Dr Slop, Mrs Shandy, and the Widow Wadman, play more elusive parts.

 

 

 ____________________

 

 

 

(From the  

Concise Cambridge History of English Literature,  

by George Sampson, rev. R.C. Churchill, 1972):

THE AGE OF JOHNSON, III:

STERNE AND THE NOVEL OF HIS TIMES

During the twenty years that followed the death of Richardson new elements were added to the novel, and of these the chief is "sentiment" or "sensibility", the master in that kind being Sterne. Apart from him the writers of the time fall into three groups, (1) the novelists of sentiment and reflection, typified by Henry Mackenzie, (2) the novelists of home life, typified by Fanny Burney, and (3) the novelists of "Gothick" romance, typified by Horace Walpole and Clara Reeve.

Laurence Sterne (1713-68) was born at Clonmel, Tipperary [Ireland], the son of Ensign Roger Sterne and great-grandson of the Richard Sterne who was Archbishop of York 1664-83. He was educated at Cambridge, took holy orders and was made perpetual curate of Coxwold in Yorkshire in 1760. He was not the kind of priest in whom the Anglican Church can feel any pride. Little is known about his life, and even that little is not very reputable. Our concern, however, is with the writer. The publication of Tristram Shandy was begun in 1760 (Vols. I and II), and continued at intervals until the year before the author's death. In 1762 Sterne's health broke down, and he began the travels of which A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr Yorick (1768) is the delightful literary product. Save that Sterne died in London and not abroad, it will be noticed that his life roughly follows the Fielding-Smollett pattern. The author of Tristram Shandy, cool copyst of other men as he was, must be accepted as an original and originating power in literature. He showed that there were untried possibilities in the novel. He opened new fields of of humour. He created a style more subtle and a form more flexible than any found before him. The novel, as left by Fielding and Smollett, might have settled into a chronicle of contemporary life and manners. Richardson had struck memorably into tragedy, but his one great story stood alone. Sterne invented for English literature the fantasia-novel, which could be a channel for the outporing of the author's own personality, idiosyncrasy, humours and opinions. Instead of form, there was apparently formlessness; but only apparently, for Sterne was the master of his own improvisations. Sterne may therefore be called a liberator—even the first of the "expressionists". His success left the novel the most flexible of all literary forms. 

Sterne's odd humour appears in the very title of his book, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; for it has been truly remarked that the "life" is that of the gentleman's uncle and the "opinions" those of the gentleman's father. Tristram, titular hero and narrator, remains unborn during much of the story and plays no part in the rest. The undying trio, Walter Shandy, My Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim are humorous both in the narrow or Jonsonian sense, and in the larger or Shakespearean sense. My Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim are variations of genius upon Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. They are on a lower plane, but the relation between them is full of beauty, as well as of humour.

Of Sterne's indecency too much can be made. That he has not the broad humour of his other master, Rabelais—that his fun in this kind provokes the snigger rather than the hearty laugh, can be at once admitted. What is unfortunate about Sterne is that much of his own personal life seems to give unpleasant point to the least pleasant parts of his writing. We should like a priest to be more priestly. But actually the most offensive quality in Sterne is the new "sensibility" or "sentimentalism". When the "spot-lights" are manipulated with design so palpable as in the death of Le Fever or in the story of the dead ass, the author goes far to defeat his own purpose; for he at once calls in question his own artistic sincerity. The pathos of Dickens is naturally poured out; the pathos of Sterne is unnaturally put on. But his artistic sins can be forgiven for the sake of an insinuating, irresistible humour in which no English writer has excelled him. His Sermons of Mr Yorick (1760-9) and Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1775) have a biographical rather than a literary importance. 

 

Daiches on Sterne (NIVEL AVANZADO)

(From David Daiches' Critical History of English Literature, ch. II.4: "The Novel: Richardson to Austen")

Fielding's notion of the comic epic in prose had infused new blood into the picaresque tradition in England, but Smollett did not follow Fielding in this and, except for his last novel, was content to follow the traditional picaresque mode and bring his hero's adventures to an end when he had carried through as many adventures as his own experience and invention enabled him to produce. But for both writers, as indeed for all writers of stories hitherto, the narrative line was important and events ordered in chronological order provided the external framework and the formal structure of the work.

Laurence Sterne (1713-68) was an altogether more original figure. His Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, published in nine volumes between 1759 and 1767, revealed a wholly new concept of form in fiction as well as a kind of sentimental comedy equally removed from Fielding's comic epic and the didactic humors of Humphrey Clinker. Told in the first person by a narrator whose personality and train of association determine the tone and organization of the narrative (and who is not born until near the end of the third volume), Tristram Shandy is on the surface a rambling and eccentric patchwork of anecdotes, digressions, reflections, jests, parodies, and dialogues centering on the character and opinions of the narrator's father, Walter Shandy, and those of his brother, the narrator's Uncle Toby, with other characters and caricatures introduced to provide humorous or sentimental incidents. The punctuation consists largely of dashes, and the book is interlarded with asterisks, blanks, and a variety of typographical and other eccentricities including pages that are solid black, entirely blank, or marbled. The chapters vary in length from several pages to a single short sentence. The author's own views are conveyed partly in his own person and partly in the person of Yorick, a sentimental and jesting person. There are passages of extreme sentimentality, in Sterne's own sense of that term: for Sterne, to be sentimenal was to be self-consciously responsive to the slightest emotional stimulus, to relish every sensation and feeling. This self-conscious responsiveness was both comic and moral. It made its possessor both sympathetic with the feelings of others and so helped to make him charitable and affectionate and at the same time led to awareness of the ludicrous and promoted genial laughter at the idiosyncrasies and private fantasies of individuals. Sterne's treatment of idiosyncrasy is more than humorous in the Jonsonian sense. He had learned from John Locke, his favourite philosopher, that the consciousness of every individual is conditioned by his private train of association; thus every an in a sense lives in a world of his own, with his own "hobby horse" (as Sterne called a private obsession) in the light of which he interprets (or misinterprets) the actions and conversations which other people's hobby horses have led them to engage in. Every man is the prisoner of his private inner world, which in turn is the product of his own "association of ideas which have no connection in nature." It is only by a conscious exertion of fellow-feeling that one man can make contact with another. Walter Shandy's main obsession (he has several) is his theory of names, and Uncle Toby's is the theory and practice of fortification and siege warfare; when Walter harangues Toby about his pet theory Toby misinterprets him and imagines he is talking about the theory of fortification, and in the same way Walter misunderstands Toby. Only the rush of affection can bridge the gulf that lies between individual consciousnesses. One might almost say that for Sterne one must be sentimental to escape from the prison of the private self.

The superficial evidence of chaos in the style and organization of Tristram Shandy is wholly misleading. Sterne knew what he was doin in his multiple digressions and inset anecdotes and tales. He deliberately eschews chronological order, partly because he knows that the past exists in present consciousness and colors and conditions it (we are our memories) and partly because he realizes that time as marked off by experiencing man is not the same as time as ticked off by the clock—a short clock-time can seem, and be, much longer in experience than a much longer clock-time. He has the chronology of his story firmly fixed in his mind; he is writing long after the events he is presenting took place, when some of the main characters are dead, so that he can occasionally leap forward to the present and see his story as history and at times stay with the moment whose events he is describing. A firm skeleton of dates lies underneathe the author's jumping about in time. Uncle Toby's death is described in volume six, but he is alive at the end of volume nine, as is Yorick, who has the last word in the novel, yet who at several earlier points in the book is looked back on as long dead. The author's whimsical, sentimental personality—at once moralist and clown, alternately tender and prurient—controls the whole story, and the digressions not only determine the comic and moral scope of the novel but also, because they are promised, produced, looked back on, in different parts of the book, help to keep the tone personal and even intimate. The suggestiveness, the appeals to the reader (often done very slyly, assuming that the reader is a woman at some moments and at others addressing him as a man), the asterisks and blanks for the reader to interpret and fill up as he wishes, also help to implicate the reader in the novel. The reader is made a conspirator with the writer in producing the work.

The society in provincial England created by Sterne in Tristram Shandy consists largely of the inhabitants of Shandy Hall and certain neighbors; it is, however, sufficiently lively, varied, and representative to stand as a microcosm of human society as a whole. Sterne vents some private dislikes and prejudices throughout the novel, notably in the ludicrous character of Dr. Slop, the man-midwife, but there is nothieng of Smollett's violent malice in these attacks. Everything is subdued to the comis-sentimental-moral picture of individuals in their oddities, obsessions, and fundamental loneliness teasing, misunderstanding, ignoring, amusing, or loving each other. There is also throughout the book a pervasive sense of human inadequacy. Walter Shandy begets the hero with a certain amount of difficulty: he is already a middle-aged man who is worried by thoughts of importance. His plans for his child (based on his own obsessive theories about names, about the importance of long noses, and other eccentric ideas) go ludicrously astray.  He is never understood and rarely understands any one else. His wife goes quietly about her business without ever responding to his frequent pedantic arguments, for she never knows what he is talking about. Yorick, the jesting sentimentalist, is misunderstood and ill used. Only Uncle Toby and his man Trim, simpletons both, enjoy (for the most part) living in their private world: their gentle emotional natures cannot understand evil and deceit, and they alone in the book never realize that they are prisoners of their private consciousnesses.

Tristram Shandy is packed with humorous pedantry and mock-pedantry. Nothing more readily illustrates the idiosyncrasies o the human mind than the obsessive love of scholars for their own theories. Walter Shandy is himself an eccentric pedant, and in his conversation Sterne can both parody the solemn disputations of scholars and create his favorite kind of comic moral dilemma. Sterne learned from Rabelais, Cervantes, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Swift, and numerous obscure minor works of learning he found in the extraordinary library of his friend John Hall-Stevenson, and he puts his remarkable fragments of erudition together with all sorts of extravagant, fantastic, and sometimes simply nonsensical elements to achieve a chorus of parodied pedantry which sometimes swells out into a full-scale mock-treatise and at other times recedes to a muttering reference or two. Throughout the book he treats sex as both ridiculous and a little sad. He has been often attacked for his prurience and for his mingling of sentimental idealism with low sexual innuendo. But the combination belongs to the essence of his art and his attitude. Man is absurd, and nothing about him is more absurd than his sexual behavior. The novel opens with Mrs Shandy inquirring of her husband, at the very moment when Tristram is about to be procreated, whether he had remembered to wind the clock the first Sunday night of the month "and being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age, at the time I have been speaking of,—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month." The two activities are thus associated in Mrs. Shandy's mind, even though as it happened this particular occasion, her husband having been away from home, was during the second week of the month. But the association had been set up, hence the question asked at such an unseasonable moment. Now this serves to make sex ludicrous, but not at all (as with Swift) disgusting. Dirty jokes are thus jokes at the expense of human absurdity. They are never obscene in the proper sense of the term, nor are they cruel. They are part of the comic sadness of the human situation.

The sentimentality sometimes rises to heights which offend the modern reade: anecdotes and inset stories of people of the most tender sensibilities weeping in each other's arms are not as popular now as they once were. But thie element in Tristram Shandy (generally associated with aUncle Toby and Trim) is bound up both with its comic and its moral elements. Uncle Toby gently releasing a fly out of the window because he does not want to hurt the creature illustrates the comic simplicity of his character and at the same time presents the moral that kindness both to his fellow men and to other creatures is man's only way of escaping from the prison of self to become a member of God's creation. That Uncle Toby is a retired soldier who spends all his time building models of fortifications and conducting mock sieges makes his tenderheartedness comic in a special way: Uncle Toby would never have though of applying his pacific principles to a consideration of war, because war as a theoretical art was his private obsession. The paradox helps to illustrate the nature of all human obsession; but it does not make Uncle Toby a hypocrite: his eloquent speech in defense of the military profession is wholly sincere—it omits, however, most of the really relevant considerations.

"Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is), is but a different name for conversation." This is one of many remarks which Sterne makes to the reader about his method of writing in the course of the novel. The tone of informal conversation or anecdote is sustained throughout the book. The author's personality pervades all, and the multifarious elements which make up this fantastic novel combine into a unity as a result. Sterne thus contrived to create a quite new kind of novelistic form, and gave the novel a kind of freedom it had never previously enjoyed and which novelists were not to take advantage of again until the twentieth century. He is in many ways—in his attitude to time, to the individual consciousness, his use of shifts in perspective—the most modern of eighteenth-century novelists. But the lesson he learned from Locke about human loneliness and the relativity of time was not what other men of his century learned from that philosopher. For other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novelists, reality remained public and socially recognizable. It was left for twentieth-century novelists, learning from their own philosophers and psychologists lessons similar to that which Sterne had learned from Locke, to develop  the novel further along the lines that Sterne had indicated.

In A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) Sterne tried to placate those who complained of his mixing bawdiness with moral feeling in Tristram Shandy. Here he is essentially the man of feeling in Tristram Shandy. Here he is essentially the man of feeling, writing a quite new kind of travel book in which he describes not famous buildings and picturesque scenes but intimate glimpses in the character and emotions of people he happens to meet. It has none of the exuberance, variety, and trickery of Tristram Shandy, being both much shorter and in the same key throughout. The humor is still here, but it is mixed mroe gently with the sentimentality, and even when the author is thrown into comic predicaments with relation to a young lady (as in the concluding scene, when he has to share the one available bedroom in an inn with a Piedmontese lady and finds himself in the end accidentally holding hands with the lady's fille de chambre), the sigh of feeling is always heard. The famous account of the poor man lamenting his dead ass is a studied exhibition of the kind of feeling for which the book implicitly pleads and which its whole tenor illustrates. Yet the narrative moves with speed and is full of surprises. The style, proliferating with dashes, is essentially that of Tristram Shandy, and the pauses, turns, interruptions, and sudden developments in the action, while not as elaborate or extravagant as in the earlier novel, still maintain continuous interest and help to establish that intimate relationship between writer and reader that was so important to Sterne. The exhibitionist exploitation of the author's own generosity and charity is more in evidence in A Sentimental Journey than in Tristram Shandy, for now he is determined to vindicate his character. Yet there is humorous self-deprecation as well, which counterbalances the exhibitionism. 

"Feeling" in A Sentimental Journey means something more than the expression of one's own emotions and sensibilities. It is essentially Einfühlung [empathy], the ability to feel oneself into someone else's situation and to be moved by the emotions of others—indeed, sometimes to feel others' emotions more strongly than they do themselves. It is morally good because it is bound up with generosity and Christian charity. Smollett, in his Travels through France and Italy (1766) had vividly expressed his own feelings, but they were feelings of exacerbation and anger, altogether different from Sterne's state of mind. Sterne refers to Smollett's travel book in his own:

The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris—from Paris to Rome—and so on—but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed was discoloured or distorted—He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings. . . . 
    I popp'd upon Smelfungus again at Turin, in his return, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell. . . .—he had been flea'd alive, and bedevilled, and used worse than St. Bartholomew, at every stage he had come at—
    —I'll tell it, cried Smelfungus, to the world. You had better tell it, said I, to your physician.

Tristram Shandy was followed by many imitations, none of which showed anything like the genius of the original. There were at the same time other manifestations of the cult of feeling in fiction. (...)

Robinson Crusoe (NIVEL AVANZADO)

 

Bragg, Melvyn, et al. "Robinson Crusoe." (In Our Time). BBC Radio 4 22 Dec. 2011.*

          http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018flp4

          2014

Epistolary Literature (NIVEL AVANZADO)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature. From its first appearance in the 17th Century with writers like Aphra Behn, epistolary fiction, fiction in the form of letters, reached its heyday in the 18th Century with works like Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. At over a million words, it's a contender for the longest English novel. It inspired impassioned followers such as Denis Diderot who described reading Richardson's novels like this: 

“In the space of a few hours I had been through a host of situations which the longest life can scarcely provide in its whole course. I had heard the genuine language of the passions; I had seen the secret springs of self-interest and self-love operating in a hundred different ways: I had become privy to a multitude of incidents and I felt I had gained in experience.” 

This sense of the reader gaining a privileged peek into the psychology of the protagonists was a key device of the epistolary form and essential to the development of the novel. Its emphasis on moral instruction also propelled the genre into literary respectability. These novels were a publishing sensation. Philosophers like Rousseau and Montesquieu took up the style, using it to convey their ideas on morality and society.So why was letter writing so important to 18th Century authors? How did this style aid the development of the novel? And why did epistolary literature fall out of favour?With John Mullan, Professor of English at University College London; Karen O’Brien, Professor in English at the University of Warwick; and Brean Hammond, Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham.

 

 

 

 

University of Nottingham.

Samuel Richardson

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

Richardson, Samuel (1689-1761), the son of a joiner, born near Derby, where his parents lived briefly before returning to London. Little is known of his boyhood, but because of his father's comparative poverty he appears to have received (in his own words) 'only common School-learning'. The tradition that he attended either Merchant Taylors' or *Christ's Hospital cannot be substantiated. As a boy he read widely, told stories to his friends, and by the age of 13 was employed writing letters for young lovers. In 1706 he was apprenticed to a printer (as his father could not afford to enter him to the Church), and in 1715 he was admitted a freeman of the *Stationers' Company. He set up in business on his own in 1721, in which year he married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his former master. All his working life he was extremely industrious, and his business prospered and expanded steadily. Like all printers of his time, he combined printing and publishing, producing books, journals, advertisement posters, and much miscellaneous work. In 1723 he took over the printing of an influential Tory journal, the True Briton, and by 1727 was sufficiently established in his profession to be appointed renter warden of the Stationers' Company. In the 1720s and early 1730s he suffered the early deaths of all his six children, and in 1731 that of his wife. He attributed the nervous disorders of his later life to the shock of these deaths. In 1733 he married Elizabeth Leake, the daughter of a fellow printer, and four of the daughters of their marriage survived. In the same year he published his The Apprentice's Vade Mecum, a book of advice on morals and conduct. In 1738 he purchased in Fulham a weekend 'country' house, which he always referred to as 'North End' , and which later became famous for his readings and literary parties. He published in 1739 his own version, pointedly moral, of Aesop's Fables, and more importantly, he began Pamela.

Inspiration for the novel initially came from a series of 'familiar letters' which fellow printers had encouraged him to write on the problems and concerns of everyday life. While these eventually grew into Pamela, they were also published separately as Letters . . . to and for Particular Friends (1741). Pamela was written in two months, between November 1739 and January 1740, and was published later that year, to very considerable acclaim. The morality and realism of the work were particularly praised, as Richardson had hoped. However, complaints of its impropriety persuaded him to revise his second edition considerably. The work had a great vogue abroad, and was soon adapted for the stage in France. Imitations and forged 'continuations' persuaded Richardson to go on with the story, and volumes iii and iv (Pamela II) were published in 1741. In that year, there appeared a stinging parody called An Apology for the Life of Mrs *Shamela Andrews, which Richardson believed to be by Fielding (as it almost certainly was) and which he never forgave. Fielding's *Joseph Andrews, which begins as a parody of Pamela, was published in 1742 but did not affect the popularity of Pamela II.

Richardson's business continued to prosper, although his health was beginning to cause him great concern, and he extended his publications in religion, history, biography, and literature. In 1733 he had begun printing for the House of Commons and in 1742 he secured the lucrative post of printer of its journals. His circle of friends had by now vastly increased, and included many admiring young ladies, known as his 'songbirds' or 'honorary daughters'.

During the writing of *Clarissa, which was probably begun in 1744, he endlessly asked his friends for comment and advice, and read passages aloud to them in his 'grotto' (or summer house) at Norht End. The first two volumes of Clarissa appeared in 1747 and were very favourably received. After heavy revision, and determined efforts to prune, a further five volumes appeared in 1748. Correspondents and the circle of friends continued to grow and now included the *Bluestocking ladies Mrs *Delany, Mrs *Carter, and later Mrs *Chapone. Clarissa was an undoubted success but there were complaints about both its length and its indecency, and it was not reprinted as often as Pamela. However, it also became very popular abroad and was translated into French, Dutch, and German.

Urged by friends, Richardson began thinking, in about 1750, of the portrayal of a 'Good Man'. He asked for the views of his extensive acquaintance and began experimenting with the 'letters' of Harriet, who was to become one of the heroines of his next novels. His illnesses and general malaise, which appear to have included a form of Parkinson's disease, increased steadily but he persevered strenuously both with his business and his writing. His authors in the 1750s included Charlotte *Lennox, Sarah *Fielding, Edward *Young and George *Lyttelton. He had now become friendly with Dr *Johnson, to whose *Rambler he contributed in 1750 and whom he helped with money in 1751. In 1752 Johnson (together with many of Richardson's other friends) read the draft of Sir Charles *Grandison, and Richardson printed the fourth volume of the Rambler. In 1753 he travelled to Bath and Cheltenham, which was as far as he had ever gone, and in 1753-4 he published the seven volumes of Sir Charles Grandison. The book sold well and rapidly became fashionable, but was assailed in various critical pamphlets for length, tedium, and doubtful morality.

In 1754-5 Richardson was master of the Stationers' Company. He published in 1755 A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments . . . in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison, a book which he considered contained the pith of all his work.  In the same year Dr Johnson published the Dictionary, which contained 97 citations from Clarissa. In 1756  Richardson was asked by *Blackstone for adevice on the reform of the *Oxford University Press. Towards the end of his life Richarson wrote a few 'letters' to, from, and about Mrs Beaumont, a minor character from Sir Charles Grandison, who had been someone of mysterious importance in his early life. He continued to revise his novels heavily, and remained active in his business until his death.

Richarson is generally agreed to be one of the chief founders of the modern novel. All his novels were *epistolary, a form he took from earlier works in English and French, which he appreciated for its immediacy ('writing to the moment' as he called it), and which he reaised to a level not attained by any of his predecessors. The 'letters', of which his novels consist, contain many long transcriptions of conversations, and the kinship with drama seems very strong. He was acutely aware of the problems of prolixity ('Length, is my principle Disgust') and worked hard to prune his original drafts, but his interest in minute analysis led inevitably to an expansive style.

A selection of his letters (6 vols, 1804) was edited by Mrs *Barbauld: see also Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson, ed. J. Carroll (1964). There is a life by T. C. D. Eaves and B. D. Kimpel (1971); see also M. Kinkead-Weekes, Samuel Richardson, Dramatic Novelist (1973); M. A. Doody, A Natural Passion (1974). 






Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, a novel by Samuel *Richardson, published 1740-1.

The first of Richardson's three novels, Pamela consists, like them, entirely of letters and journals, of which Richardson presents himself as the 'editor'. He believed he had hit upon 'a new species of writing' but he was not the inventor of the *epistolary novel, several of which already existed in English and French. He did however raise the form to a level hitherto unknown, and transformed it to display his own particular skills.

There are six correspondents in Pamela, most with their own particular style and point of view, but Pamela herself provides most of the letters and journals, with the 'her', Mr B., having only two. Pamela Andrews is a hansome, intelligent girl of 15 when her kind employer Lady B. dies. Penniless and without protection, Pamela is pursued by Mr B., Lady B.'s son, but she repulses him and remains determined to retain her chastity and unsullied conscience. Letters reveal Mr B.'s cruel dominance and pride, but also Pamela's half-acknowledged tenderness for him, as well as her vanity, prudence, and calculation. Angrily Mr B. separates her from her friends, Mrs Jervis the housekeeper and Mr Longman the steward, and dispatches her to B— Hall, his remote house in Lincolnshire, where she is imprisoned, guarded, and threatened by the cruel Mrs. Jewkes.  Only the chaplain, Mr Williams, is her friend, but he is powerless to help. For 40 days, allowed no visits or correspondence, she keeps a detailed journal, analysing her situation and her feelings, and at the same time revealing her faults of prudence and pride. She despairs, and begins to think of suicide. Mr B., supposing her spirit must now be broken, arrives at B— Hall, and, thinking himself generous, offers to make her his mistress and keep her in style. She refuses indignantly, and he later attempts to rape her and then to arrange a mock-marriage. Two scenes by the pond mark a turning point in their relationship. Both begin to be aware of their faults, and of the genuine nature of their affection. However, Pamela again retreats and refuses his proposal of marriage. She is sent away from B— Hall, but a message gives her a last chance. Overcoming her pride and caution, she decides to trust him, accepts his offer, and they are married. In the remaining third of the book Pamela's goodness wins over even Lady Davers, Mr B.'s supercilious sister, and becomes a model of virtue to her circle of admiring friends; but (as in Pamela, Part II) the author's creative drive becomes overwhelmed by his urge to moralize.

The book was highly successful and fashionable, and further editions were soon called for. Richardson felt obliged to continue his story, not only because of the success of Pamela but because of the number of forged continuations that began to appear. Pamela, Part II appeared in 1741. Here Pamela is exhibited, through various small and separate instances, as the perfect wife, patiently leading her profligate husband to reform; a mother who adores (and breastfeeds) her children; and a friend who is at the disposal of all, and who brings about the penitence of the wicked. Much space is given over to discussion of moral, domestic, and general subjects. 

*Shamela (1741, almost certainly by *Fielding) vigorously mocked what the author regarded as the hypocritical morality of Pamela; and Fielding's *Joseph Andrews, which begins as a parody of Pamela, appeared in 1742.




Clarissa: or The History of a Young Lady, an *epistolary novel by Samuel *Richardson, published 1748 (for 1747)-1749, in eight volumes. About one-third of the work (which is in all over a million words) consists of the letters of Clarissa and Lovelace, mainly written to Anna Howe and John Belford respectively, but there are over 20 correspondents in all, displaying many points of view and variations in style. 


Lovelace, a handsome, dashing rake, is courting Arabella Harlowe, the elder sister of Clarissa. The Harlowes are an acquisitive, ambitious, 'narrow-souled' family, and when Lovelace transfers his affections to Clarissa they decide he is not good enough and that Clarissa must marry the wealthy but ugly Solmes, whom she detests. When she refuses she is locked up and humiliated. Lovelace, cleverly representing himself as her deliverer, plays on her fears, convinces her that he is forwarding her reconciliation with her family, and persuades her to escape under his protection to London. There he establishes her in a superior brothel, which she at first supposes to be respectable lodgings. She unwaveringly resists his advances and he, enraged by her intransigence, is also attracted by it and finds his love and respect for her increase. Her emotions are likewise deeply confused; she is fascinated by his charm and wit, but distrusts him and refuses his eventual proposals of marriage. In his growing insistence, Lovelace overreaches himself, interfering with her letters, deceiving her over a supposed emissary from her family, violently assalulting her, and cunningly ensnaring her after he escapes. As she unhappily but stubbornly resists, he becomes more obsessive in his determination to conquer, and makes an attempt to rape her. He claims to believe that her resistance is no more than prudery and that, once subdued, she will turn to him: 'Is not this  the hour of trial—And in her, of the trial of the virtue of her whole Sex, so long premeditated, so long threatened? —Whether her frost be frost indeed? Whether her virtue be principle?' (vol. V, Letter 31). To Clarissa chastity represents identity, and the climax of her tragedy comes when Lovelace, abetted by the women of the house, drugs and rapes her, an event he reports in one of the shortest letters of the work: 'And now, Belford, I can go no farther. The affair is over. Clarissa lives.' (Vol. V, Letter 32). 


Slowly Clarissa loses grip of her reason, and Lovelace realizes that he has lost the very dominance he had hoped to establish. Cut off from family, friends, and even correspondence, Clarissa eventually escapes, only to find herself trapped in a debtor's prison. She is rescued by Belford, who looks after her with affectionate care. Lovelace is overwhelmed by remorse. Clarissa recovers her sanity, but almost ceases to write, and her long decline and Christian preparation for death are reported largely in letters by Belford. After her death her cousin, Colonel Morden, kills Lovelace in a duel. Because of its great length, the novel has been more admired than read, but it has always been held in high critical esteem; the characters of the protagonists are developed with great sutblety, and the irresolvable nature of their conflict takes on an emblematic and tragic quality unique for its author and its period.

Bibliografía sobre Samuel Richardson

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ROBINSON CRUSOE (Buñuel)

Una película de Luis Buñuel (1952) sobre la novela de Daniel Defoe.

 

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe / Robinson Crusoe. Dir. Luis Buñuel. Screenplay by Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza and Philip Ansel Roll (Hugo Butler), based on Daniel Defoe's novel. Cast: Daniel O'Herlihy, Jaime Fernandez, Felipe de Alba, Chel Lopez, Jose Chavez, Emilio Garibay. Pathe Color, photog. Alex Philips. Ed. Carlos Savage, Alberto Valenzuela. Artdir. Edward FitzGerald. Music by Anthony Collins. Assoc. prod. Henry F. Ehrlich. Prod. Oscar Dancigers. Mexico: Productions Tepeyac, 1952. Online at YouTube-la U 3 Nov. 2012.*

         http://youtu.be/b-YoBU0XT90

         2013

 

 

 

Daniel Defoe

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

DEFOE, Daniel (1660-1731), born in London, the son of James Foe, a butcher. He changed his name to Defoe from c. 1695. He attended Morton's academy for Dissenters at Newington Green with a view to the ministry, but by the time he married Mary Tuffley in 1683/4  he was established as a hosiery merchant in Cornhill, having travelled in France, Spain, the Low Countries, and possibly Italy and Germany; he was absorbed by travel throughout his life. He took part in Monmouth's rebellion, and in 1688 joined the advancing forces of William III. His first important signed work was An Essay upon Projects (1697), followed by The True-Born Englishman (1701), an immensely popular satirical poem attacking the prejudice against a king of foreign birth and his Dutch friends. In 1702 appeared The Shortest Way with Dissenters, a notorious pamphlet in which Defoe, himself a Dissenter, ironically demanded the total and savage suppression of dissent; for this he was fined, imprisoned (May-Nov. 1703) and pilloried. While in prison he wrote his Hymn to the Pillory, a mock-Pindaric *ode which was sold in the streets to sympathetic crowds. Meanwhile various business projects (the breeding of civet cats, marine insurance, a brick works) had come to grief, and Defoe's fortunes were revived by Harley, the Tory politician, who arranged a pardon and employed him as a secret agent; between 1703 and 1714 Defoe travelled around the country for Harley and Godolphin gathering information and testing the political climate. Defoe wrote many pamphlets for Harley, and in 1704 began the Review; in the same year appeared his pamphlet Giving Alms No Charity and in 1706 True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs Veal, a vivid report of a current ghost story, probably by Defoe. Certain anti-Jacobite pamphlets in 1712-13 led to his prosecution by the Whigs and to a brief imprisonment. He now started a new trade journal, Mercator, in place of the Review. In 1715 he was convicted of libelling Lord Annesley (by implying that he was a Jacobite); he escaped punishment through the intervention of Townshend, the Whig secretary of state.

Defoe was an extremely versatile and prolific writer, and produced some 250 books, pamphlets, and journals, many anonymously or pseudonymously, but the works for which he is best known belong to his later years. *Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719, the Farther Adventures following a few months later. The next five years saw the appearance of his most important works of fiction: Captain *Singleton in 1720, *Moll Flanders, A Journal of the *Plague Year, and *Colonel Jack in 1722; *Roxana, the *Memoirs of a Cavalier (now considered to be certainly by Defoe), his tracts on Jack *Sheppard, and A New Voyage round the World in 1724; The Four Voyages of Capt. George Roberts in 1726. His Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, a guidebook in three volumes (1624-26), is a vivid first-hand account of the state of the country, gleaned from his many travels, the last of which he appears to have taken in 1722. His last principal works were The Complete English Tradesman (1726), Augusta Triumphans (1728), A Plan of the English Commerce (1728) and The Complete English Gentleman, not published until 1890. He died in his lodgings in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, and was buried in what is now Bunhill Fields. Defoe's influence on the evolution of the English novel was enormous, and many regard him as the first true novelist. He was a master of plain prose and powerful narrative, with a journalist's curiosity and love of realistic detail; his peculiar gifts made him one of the greatest reporters of his time, as well as a great imaginative writer who in Robinson Crusoe created one of the most familiar and resonant myths of modern literature. Important work on the Defoe canon by P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens includes The Canonisation of Defoe (1988), Defoe De-Attributions (1994) and A Critical Biography of Daniel Defoe (1998).


The Review,  a periodical started by *Defoe in 1704, under the title of A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France, which after various transformations became A Review of the State of the British Nation in 1707, it lasted until 1713. It was a non-partisan paper, an organ of the commercial interests of the nation: it appeared thrice weekly and was written, practically in its entirety, by Defoe himself, who excpressed in it his opinions on all current political topics, thus initiating the political leading article. It also had lighter articles on love, marriage, gambling, etc.: Defoe's attitude to his readers was that he strove to 'wheedle them in (if it may be allowed that expression) to the knowledge of the world; who, rather than take more pains, would be content with their ignorance, and search into nothing'.

The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a romance by *Defoe, published 1719.

In 1704 Alexander Selkirk, who had run away to sea and joined a privateering expedition under *Dampier, after a quarrel with his captain was put ashore on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernández. He was rescued in 1709 by Woodes *Rogers. Defoe was probably familiar with several versions of this tale, and added many incidents from his own imagination to his account of Crusoe, presenting it as a true story. The extraordinarily convincing account of the shipwrecked Crusoe's successful efforts to make himself a tolerable existence in his solitude first revealed Defoe's genius for vivid fiction; it has a claim to be the first English novel. Defoe was nearly 60 when he wrote it.

The author tells how, with the help of a few stores and utensils saved from the wreck and the exercise of infinite ingenuity, Crusoe built himself a house, domesticated goats, and made himself a boat. He describes his struggle to accept the workings of Providence, the perturbation of his mind caused by a visit of cannibals, his rescue from death of an indigenous native he later names Friday, and finally the coming of an English ship whose crew are in a state of mutiny, the subduing of the mutineers, and Crusoe's rescue.

The book had immediate and permanent success, was translated into many languages, and inspired many imitations, known generically as 'Robinsonades', including *Philip Quarll, *Peter Wilkins, and *The Swiss Family Robinson. Defoe followed it with The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), in which with Friday he revisits his island, is attacked by a fleet of canoes on his departure, and loses Friday in the encounter. Serious Reflections . . . of Robinson Crusoe . . . with His Vision of the Angelick World, which is more a manual of piety than a work of fiction, appeared in 1720, and was never as popular. The influence of Robinson Crusoe has been very great. *Rousseau in Émile recommended  it as the book that should be studied by a growing boy, *Coleridge praised its evocation of 'the universal man', and *Marx in Das Kapital used it to illustrate economic theory in action.

In recent years 'Man (later Girl) Friday' came to describe a lowly assistant performing a multiplicity of tasks.

In The Rise of the Novel (1957) and other essays Ian Watt provides one of the most controversial modern interpretations, relating Crusoe's predicament to the rise of bourgeois individualism, division of labour, and social and spiritual alienation. See David Blewett, The Illustration of Robinson Crusoe, 1719-1920 (1995).


Adventures of Captain Singleton, a romance of adventure by Defoe, published 1720.

Singleton, the first-person narrator, having been kidnapped in his infancy is sent to sea. Having 'no sense of virtue or religion', he takes part in a mutiny and is put ashore in Madagascar with his comrades; he reaches the continent of Africa and crosses it from east to west, encountering many adventures and obtaining much gold, which he dissipates on his return to England. He takes once more to the sea, becomes a pirate, carrying on his depredations in the West Indies, Indian Ocean, and China Seas, acquires great wealth, which he brings home, and finally marries the sister of a shipmate.



The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, a romance by *Defoe, published 1722.

This purports to be the autobiography of the daughter of a woman who had been transported to Virginia for theft soon after her child's birth. The child, abandoned in England, is brought up in the house of the compassionate mayor of Colchester. The story relates her seduction, her subsequent marriages and liaisons, and her visit to Virginia, where she finds her mother and discovers that she has unwittingly married her own brother. After leaving him and returning to England, she is presently reduced to destitution. She becomes an extremely successful pickpocket and thief, but is presently detected and transported to Virginia in company with one of her former husbands, a highwayman. With the funds that each has amassed they set up as planters, and Moll moreover finds that she has inherited a plantation from her mother. She and her husband spend their declining years in an atmosphere of prosperity and ostensible penitence.



A Journal of the Plague Year, a historical fiction by *Defoe, published 1722.

It purports to be the narrative of a resident in London during 1664-5, the year of the Great Plague; the initials 'H.F.' which conclude it have been taken to refer to Defoe's uncle Henry Foe, a saddler, from whom the author may have heard some of the details he describes. It tells of the gradual spread of the plague, the terror of the inhabitants, and the steps taken by the authorities, such as the shutting up of infected houses and the prohibition of public gatherings. The symptoms of the disease, the circulation of the dead-carts, the burials in mass graves, and the terrible scenes witnessed by the supposed narrator are described with extraordinary vividness. The general effects of the epidemic, notably in the closing down of trading and the flight from the city, are also related, and an estimate of the total number of deaths is made. The Journal embodied information from various sources, including official documents; some scenes appear to have been borrowed from *Dekker's The Wonderfull Yeare (1603). Defoe's subject was suggested by fears of another outbreak, following the one in Marseilles in 1721 which occasioned Sir Robert *Walpole's unpopular Quarantine Act. *Hazlitt ascribed to the work 'an epic grandeur, as well as heart-breaking familiarity'.


Colonel Jack, The History and Remarkable Life of Colonel Jacque, Commonly Call'd, a romance of adventure by *Defoe, published 1722.

The supposed narrator, abandoned by his parents in childhood, falls into bad company and becomes a pickpocket. His profession grows distasteful to him, he enlists, and presently deserts to avoid being sent to serve in Flanders. He is kidnapped, sent to Virginia, and sold to a planter. He is promoted to be an overseer, is given his liberty, becomes himself a planter, and acquires much wealth. He returns home and has a series of unfortunate matrimonial adventures, but finally ends in prosperity and repentenace.


Roxana, or The Fortunate Mistress, a novel by *Defoe, published 1724.

This purports to be the autobiography of Mlle Beleau, the beautiful daughter of French Protestant refugees, brought up in England and married to a London brewer, who, having squandered his property, deserts her and her five children. She enters upon a career of prosperous wickedness, passing from one protector to another in England, France, and Holland, amassing much wealth, and receiving the name Roxana by accident, in consequence of a dance that she performs. She is accompanied in her adventures by a faithful maid, Amy, a very human figure. She marries a respectable Dutch merchant in London and subsequently lives as a person of consequence in Holland. When one of her daughters appears on the scene in London, Roxana dares not acknowledge her, fearing that her past life will be revealed to her new spouse and her life of security will be ruined. When Amy says she will murder the girl, if necessary, to silence her inquiries about Roxana's identity, Roxana is filled with horror and relief. Both Amy and the girl disappear, and Roxana, miserable and apprehensive, is tormented by her conscience. Her husband discerns her iniquity and soon thereafter dies, leaving her only a small sum of money. In the company of her alter ego Amy, Roxana descends into debt, poverty, and remorseful penitence.


Memoirs of a Cavalier, a historical romance most probably by Defoe, published 1724.

The pretended author, 'Col. Andrew Newport', a young English gentleman born in 1608, travels on the Continent, starting in 1630 goes to Vienna, and accompanies the army of the emperor, being present at the siege and sack of Magdeburg, which is vividly presented. He then joins the army of Gustavus Adolphus, remaining with it until the death of that king and taking part in a number of engagements which he describes in detail. After his return to England he joins the king's army, first against the Scots, then against the forces of Parliament, being present at the battle of Edgehill, which he fully describes, the relief of York, and the battle of Naseby.

Memoirs of an English Officer

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