THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Historical Context
 After the turbulent years of the 16th and 17th century, 18th century
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came as a relief. After the Stuarts, a succession of Protestant
kings rules Britain. However, a monarch would never again
influence arts and culture in manner of Elizabeth I. The power in
the state shifts towards Pariliament, and the social standards and
taste are dictated by the middle class.
This literary period was influenced by the neoclassical trends
from the continent, and the translations of classic Greek and
Roman poets.
The 18th century is often called ‘The Age of Reason’. Literature
was dealing with reason, not feelings, and a comfortable town
life was preferred to the wild nature.
A shift from poetry and drama towards the novel.
According to the taste of the constantly rising middle class.
The Augustan Age (1700-1745)
 In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed
by the development of the English essay.
 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator
established the form of the British periodical essay -the
detached observer of human life who can meditate upon
the world without advocating any specific changes in it.
 The English novel, first emerging in the Restoration,
developed into a major literary form.
 The novel would benefit indirectly from a tragedy of the
stage, and in mid-century many more authors would begin
to write novels.
 In this period many new prose forms and genres began:
 Dr. Samuel Johnson published the first English dictionary
in 1755.
 His friend James Boswell recorded his life in Life of
Johnson, one of the first biographies in English.
 Edward Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, the first great historical work in English.
 Oratorical prose (speeches)
 Epistolary prose (letters)
 Mid-18th century – flourishing of the novel
 Samuel Richardson – Pamela, Clarissa
 Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones
 Tobias Smollet – Roderick Random
 Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy
 Oliver Goldsmith – The Vicar of Wakefield
JONATHAN SWIFT (1667 – 1745)
 The greatest prose writer of English classicism; a great humorist
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and a savage satirist.
Capable of pure fun, but there is a core of bitterness in him
which revealed itself finally as a mad hatred of mankind.
He still strove to do good for his fellow-men, especially the poor
of Dublin where he was Dean of St. Patrick’s.
His "savage indignation" resulted in devastating attacks on his
age in A Tale of a Tub (1704), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A
Modest Proposal (1729).
A Tale of a Tub – a parable of three forms of Christianity in
England. A story of three brothers – Jack (Calvin), Martin
(Luther; Protestantism) and Peter (st; Catholic Church) – and
what they do with their inheritance (Christian religion).
 Gulliver’s Travels – 4 books:
 A Voyage to Lilliput – a shrunken human race, "not six
inches high" (15 cm), and its concerns – so important to
Lilliput – become shrunken accordingly. It makes fun of
mankind, especially England and English politics. Lilliput
and Blefuscu are permanently at war because of differences
over the correct way to eat a boiled egg – from the rounded
end according to the Blefuscudians, or from the sharp end
according to the Lilliputians. The supporters of the
differing views were called "Big-endians" and "Littleendians." The story is a parody of the European nations,
particularly England and France, who were in Swift's view
constantly at war over 'trivial' matters + satirizes the
dispute between Catholics and Protestants.
 A Voyage to Brobdingnag – land of the giants (72 feet; 22
meters). Tiny Gulliver sees human deformities magnified to a
feverous pitch; horror of the human body.
 A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg and
Japan – makes fun of useless, absurd and impractical
inventions.
 A Voyage to the Country of Houyhnhnms – horses with
rational souls and highest moral principles are contrasted
with the filthy, depraved Yahoos, who are really human
beings. Swift’s hatred of man reaches its climax; the powerful
and horrible moment when Gulliver reaches home and
cannot bear the touch of his wife – her smell is the smell of a
Yahoo and makes him vomit.
DANIEL DEFOE (1660-1731)
 Middle-class tastes were reflected in the growth of
periodicals and newspapers, the best of which were the
Tatler and the Spectator produced by Joseph Addison and
Sir Richard Steele . The novels of Daniel Defoe, the first
modern novels in English, owe much to the techniques of
journalism. They also illustrate the virtues of merchant
adventure vital to the rising middle class. Indeed, the novel
was to become the literary form most responsive to middleclass needs and interests.
 A journalist. He had things to say and wanted to say them
clearly.
 Journal of the Plague Year – (Dnevnik iz godine kuge).
 Most remembered for his novels he wrote later in life. The
intention of these works is that the reader should regard them as
true, not as fictitious.
 Moll Flanders (1722) – we seem to be reading the real life-story of
a “bad woman”, written in the style appropriate to her. A
fictionalized autobiography of a prostitute and a thief. Defoe
demonstrates his knowledge of English social and economic life.
 Robinson Crusoe (1720) – the story of a castaway sailor based on
the account of Alexander Selkirk. Realistic approach: Told in the
first person as if it were Robinson’s personal story; amassing
facts, details. A stranded sailor who manages to reproduce in
nature the material and moral pattern of the civilization he left
behind. A success story – a man who is triumphant owing to his
hard work, diligence, physical and mental abilities not owing to
his origins (noble family).
The Age of Sensibility (The Age of
Johnson) – 1745-1784
 SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784). Often referred to
simply as Dr Johnson, is one of England's best known
literary figures: a poet, essayist, biographer,
lexicographer and a critic of English Literature.
Between 1745 and 1755, Johnson wrote perhaps his
best-known work, A Dictionary of the English
Language. The rise in literacy and the declining cost of
printing demanded clearer standards in spelling,
meaning and grammar. Well known for his wit and
aphorisms – preserved for us in the Life of Johnson
(1791) by his friend James Boswell.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761)
 A professional printer who took to novel-writing when he
was fifty. He liked to help women with the composition to
their love letters and was asked by a publisher to write a
volume of model letters for use on various occasions. He
was inspired to write a novel in the form of a series of
letters (epistolary novel), a novel which should implant a
moral lesson in the mind of his readers (he thought of
these reader primarily as women). This novel was Pamela,
or Virtue Rewarded, which describes the assaults made on
the honour of a virtuous housemaid by an unscrupulous
young man. Pamela resists clinging tightly to her code of
honour and her reward is, ultimately, marriage to her
would-be seducer. Criticism: virtue = commodity to be sold
to the highest bidder.
HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754)
 Parodies of Pamela – Shamela, Joseph Andrews
 Joseph dismissed from service because he will not let his
employer, Lady Booby, make love to him. He takes the road
to the village where his sweetheart lives, meets Parson
Adams – strange adventures on the road, meeting rouges,
vagabonds and tricksters of all kinds. Picaresque novel
(Spanish – picaro = rouge) –
 Fielding’s masterpiece Tom Jones – picaresque elements –
theme of journey – and ‘mock-epic’, largeness of the
conception, but not Homeric characters. Charming,
ordinary and likable characters, Tom Jones and Sophia
Western. A rich variety of characters, a sweeping view of
society, shrewd moral observations. Boisterous humour,
good sense, vivid characterization.
Other significant novelists
 Laurence Sterne - a unique perspective on the impossibility of
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biography (the model for most novels up to that point) with
Tristram Shandy,
Tobias Smollett improved on the picaresque novel with Roderick
Random
Each of the above mentioned novels represents a formal and
thematic divergence from the others.
Each novelist was in dialogue and competition with the others
The novel established itself as a diverse and open-formed genre
Most of the 18th century novels are regarded as ‘classics’ today.
End of
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century
 During the Age of Sensibility, literature reflected the
worldview of the Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason)
– a rational and scientific approach to religious, social,
political, and economic issues that promoted a secular view
of the world and a general sense of progress.
 This extreme rationalism and skepticism naturally led to a
reaction, which would evolve to the Romantic movement.
Some literary works showed increased emphasis on instinct
and feeling, rather than judgment and restraint. A growing
sympathy for the Middle Ages during the Age of Sensibility
sparked an interest in medieval ballads and folk literature.
Ann Radcliffe's novels would embody all of this.
Gothic Novel
 a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and
romance.
 generally believed to have been invented by the English author
Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The
effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an
extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new
at the time of Walpole's novel.
 Gothic Revival architecture – rejects the clarity and reason in the
same way and focuses on intense feelings and atmosphere.
 he ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions
by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human
creations
 Features of Gothic novel:mystery, terror, the
supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic
architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles,
madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.
 Stock characters: villains, tyrants, bandits, maniacs,
Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales,
demons, ghosts, etc.
 Anne Ratcliffe was the pioneer of the Gothic
Novel. The majority of her work tends to involve
innocent, but heroic young women who find
themselves in gloomy, mysterious castles ruled by
even more mysterious barons with dark pasts.
 The Romance of the Forest
 Most famous novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho considered the ultimate Gothic Novel of the late
18th century.