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THE AUTHOR's FARCE: SATIRIC AGENCY, AUTHORITY, and the PERFORMANCE of EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SATIRE on FILM and the STAGE by BREA

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THE AUTHOR's FARCE: SATIRIC AGENCY, AUTHORITY, and the PERFORMANCE of EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SATIRE on FILM and the STAGE by BREA THE AUTHOR’S FARCE: SATIRIC AGENCY, AUTHORITY, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SATIRE ON FILM AND THE STAGE By BREANNE REBECCA ORYSCHAK A dissertation submitted to the Department of English in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada December, 2010 Copyright © Breanne Oryschak 2010 Abstract This dissertation investigates how dramatic performance affects satire, its forms of authorisation, adaptation, and interpretation. Focusing on Restoration and eighteenth-century dramatic satires and film adaptations of eighteenth-century satires, I reassess literary criticism that claims the incommensurability of satire and performance based on a particular understanding of satiric authority as unidirectional and didactic, and therefore incompatible with the multi-dimensional nature of film and theatrical authority. In Chapter One, I establish how satire inquires into the nature of authority itself, exposing its “truths,” disciplinary modalities, and mediations, rather than correcting social behaviour. By putting authorised discourses into conflict, satire renders the contingencies of authority and destabilises its own authority through reflexivity and indirection, which counteract clear communication. Satire then invites multiple readings, even disagreements, instead of imposing consensus or compulsory meaning. In its diffusion and fracturing of perspectives, satire becomes amenable to the multiple agents and conditions of theatre and film performances. The task of satiric film and theatre becomes to “tear the seams” of performance and to apply the same reflexivity that satire applies to other authorities to performance’s own seamless authorisation in order to pursue its broader inquiry into power and discipline. In Chapter Two, I focus on the Collier Controversy, a pamphlet war in the late seventeenth century, which debated representations of vice in the theatre. I use the controversy to demonstrate what dramatic satire is not: uniform in intention, exposition, and interpretation. In Chapter Three, I examine Henry Fielding’s dramatic satires from 1730s to further debunk the idea of controlled and controlling relations between satirist and audience. I revise criticism of ii Fielding’s plays as “anti-theatrical” by demonstrating how his self-reflexive performances produce satiric theatre rather than negate theatrical performance. Chapter Four reviews adaptations of Gulliver’s Travels and here I emphasise the need to combine satiric self- reflexivity in film authorship with critical content in satiric films. In the final chapter, I demonstrate how the mockumentary form used in Michael Winterbottom’s 2005 film adaptation of Tristram Shandy successfully produces satiric effect by questioning the premise of its own authority alongside modes of authority and authorship satirised in Sterne’s book. iii Acknowledgements My thanks to the Department of English at Queen’s for aiding me to complete this thesis in direct and indirect ways, as well as fuelling my love for satire. I need to thank my supervisor, Christopher Fanning, first and foremost: Chris, you guided this project with generosity, rigor, and attention, asking the right questions and challenging me to think through the many critical quagmires that I entered into with this thesis. Your own work stands for me as a model of interesting and incisive literary criticism and your good humour and mentorship prove that one can be both an excellent critic/scholar and a great friend. I would also like to thank my second reader, Donato Santeramo, for his enthusiasm about my project and for sharing his incredible stories about Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni. To Sylvia Söderlind, I owe thanks for bringing me into this PhD program in the first place and seeing me through to the end result with such interest and warmth. To Gwynn Dujardin and Marcie Frank, I am grateful for your genuine engagement with my project and for offering indispensable advice for its potential, future development. Finally, I need to thank Marta Straznicky for her many years of support and interest in my growth as a scholar here at Queen’s. I would be amiss not to thank Kathy Goodfriend for the endless intercessions, help, and friendship that she offered me while at Queen’s. I also need to send special thanks to Earla Wilputte at St. Francis Xavier University: Earla, you brought the Restoration and 18th century to life for me and inspired me to investigate it further. Thank you for also allowing me to share that passion with your own students years later. I certainly would not have survived here at Queen’s or in Kingston without my incredible friends and allies. To Dana Olwan and Raji Singh Soni, I do not know where to begin, but thank you for your unwavering friendship, kindness, intelligence, laughter, and solidarity. iv Dana, you have taught me to grow as a person of conscience, and Raji, you have inspired and challenged me to think the impossible. To Cara Fabre, I owe a lot for her friendship and for asking about my thesis at a crucial time, giving me the space I needed to talk through my ideas. To Andrew Stevens and Marcel Nelson, or the Thesis Writing Support Group, I am thankful for carrying me through the last lap with just enough laughter and distraction to overwhelm despair. Finally, I am grateful too for the time, phone calls, good humour, food, and wine that I have shared with Erin Milliken, Sayyida Jaffer, Ashley Vanstone, Janna-Marynn Brunnen, Jennifer Harrison, Emmy Anglin, Matt Strohack, Paul Barrett, Julia Cercone, Jess Roberts, Fraser Hawkins, Duncan Links, Kristiana Clemens, and Vee Blackbourn. I dedicate this thesis to my parents, Allan and Sharon Oryschak, particularly as it was written and completed with their steadfast love and support, material and otherwise. Dad, your patience, intellectual curiosity, and generosity are incomparable and I only hope to emulate them here and in life. Mom, your perseverance and passion for Truth and social justice continue to enliven me and help me always to try to see the bigger picture. This would have been impossible without the two of you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract: ii Acknowledgements: iv Table of Contents vi Chapter 1: Satire in Performance/Performed Satire: Towards theoretical models in theatre and film 1 Chapter 2: The Collier Controversy and the problem of interpreting satiric performance in Restoration Comedy 49 Chapter 3: The Author’s Force: Henry Fielding, the theatre, and satiric performances as “allegories of unreadability” 82 Chapter 4: Charting Gulliver’s Travels: Interpretive conundrums, fidelity, and the difficulties of adapting Swift to live-action film 138 Chapter 5: Satire, Celebrity, and the Conditionality of Authority: (mis)adapting Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, in Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock & Bull Story (2005) 182 Conclusion: “Satiric performance” not “satiric anti-performance” 233 Works Cited: 242 vi Chapter 1: Satire in Performance/Performed Satire: Towards theoretical models in theatre and film “[T]he structural characteristics of drama alone are powerful enough to undermine most attempts at pure satire on the stage.” - Deborah Payne, “Comedy, Satire, or Farce?” “The element that makes plays satiric is the nature of the performance they contain. Plays, of course, are performed, and their appearance before a public becomes the object of critical scrutiny in performance theory. Satire does not flow from the performance of a play but from the performance within it. My concern, therefore, is not with the substitution of performance for text but with satiric performance as represented by the text.” - Charles Knight, The Literature of Satire “And just as we cannot abandon the notion that upholding a positive norm is the determining generic function of satire, neither can we just give up the idea that satiric discourse is mimetic.” - Rose Zimbardo, At Zero Point “Results indicate that the ambiguous deadpan satire offered by Stephen Colbert in The Colbert Report is interpreted by audiences in a manner that best fits with their individual political beliefs. While common wisdom might suggest that this is simply comedy and people should ‘get the joke,’ this study demonstrates that such assumptions do not seem to hold true when the source is also ambiguous, offering no external cues to guide individuals’ message processing.” - Heather L. LaMarre et al, “The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report.” In her 1995 article, “Comedy, Satire, or Farce? Or the Generic Difficulties of Restoration Dramatic Satire,” Deborah Payne contends that “there is something about drama that resists – or makes difficult – the production of ‘pure’ satire on the stage” (3). Though Payne places “pure” in scare quotes and insists that she does not claim for satire “an ontological status” (4), she effectively imbues textual satire with a purity of authority and authorization of what she sees as “satire’s generic imperative”: to render “the object of its attack…manifest” (5). Here Payne takes recourse to traditional views of satire that I think are articulated best by Ronald Paulson in The Fictions of Satire: 1 Satire imitates, presents, explores, analyzes the evil (the term I shall use instead of Aristotle’s ‘ugly’), but it must at the same time (1) make the reader aware of a pointing finger, of an ought or an ought not, that refers beyond the page to his own life, or – and this is
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