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Henry Neville's the Isle of Pines As Literary Hoax the Naughty Pines

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Henry Neville's the Isle of Pines As Literary Hoax the Naughty Pines THE NAUGHTY PINES: HENRY NEVILLE'S THE ISLE OF PINES AS LITERARY HOAX THE NAUGHTY PINES: HENRY NEVILLE'S THE ISLE OF PINES AS LITERARY HOAX By NAT W. HARDY, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University © Copyright by Nat W. Hardy, September, 1993 MASTER OF ARTS (1993) McMASTER UNIVERSITY (English) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: The Naughty Pines: Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines As Literary Hoax AUTHOR: Nat W. Hardy, B.A. (University of Alberta) SUPERVISOR: Professor Richard Morton NUMBER OF PAGES: viii, 140, Appendix [34 pp]. 11 Abstract For a story which has been described as IIone of the most successful literary hoaxes in the English language," Henry Neville's The Isle afPines has received little critical attention. This thesis will exhume this long-forgotten story by acknowledging the radical fecundity and complexity of a groundbreaking novella in English literary history. Similar to the settlers of the Imperial British Empire, who began to record their own histories, the fictional history of George Pines is also transmitted to England following one-hundred years of isolated, albeit accidental occupation, making it one of the first post-colonial texts. For my critical analysis of the text, my theoretical method employs the post-colonial theories of Bill Ashcroft and Frederic Jameson, and for the sexual themes in the text I use theory of Michel Foucault and Jonathan Dollimore. For purposes of analysis, I consider the story an androcentric utopia and I examine the text from this assumption. Chapter one examines the rhetorical mode of the pamphleteer. Neville, like his contemporaries uses rhetorical tricks such as exotic locations with exotic descriptions, epistolary testimonials, explicit geographical details and illustrations to persuade the reader that the narrative is factual and not fictional. In chapter two, I discuss the politics of colonization where English absolutist and patriarchal social structures are draconicaHy maintained on the exotic locale of the island. When the utopia is threatened order is quickly restored - "restoration" of order is the key metaphor in this chapter. Chapter three deals with Neville's political and pornographic agenda. The exoticness of the story introduces both polygyny and interracial sexual relations iii as well as sexually charged diction to convey meaning. Although Neville's text can be interpreted in a number of different ways, the intention of the final chapter and this thesis is to focus on the e!otic level to which the text engages the reader. iv Acknowledgements lvlihi crede, hoc mihi magis quam ubi nocet.1 Immo vero, serio 2 I wish to thank many people over the course of this thesis, not to my entire academic tenure thus far. First and foremost, thanks to my parents for all their help and fiscal support when it was desperately needed. Many thanks to my Aunt Jane for all her encouragement over the years. And finally, an especially huge thank you to Kate for her unfailing support, the best smile in southern Ontario, and her love and friendship. « I also wish to express my sincere appreciation to my supervisor, Professor Richard Morton. His wealth of knowledge and his tremendous insights provided the direction, the help, and the positive encouragement that was required in order to make this thesis a challenging but true delight to write. Many thanks also to Dr. Peter Walmsley for the insightful and detailed comments he made on earlier drafts of this thesis. His profound understanding of the historical context of the Restoration, hopeful1y precluded my attempts at a revisionist history of republicanism during this period. My gratitude also goes to Dr. James Brasch has been incredibly kind and supportive over my year here at McMaster. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Sylvia Bowerbank for her insights on libertinism and for allowing me to write a not-so-naughty paper on Henry Neville in the first place. 1 Believe me, this hurts me more than it hurts you. 2 No, but seriously ... v An extra special thank you to Drs. Chris Bullock, Jonathan Hart, Jo-Ann Wallace, and Janice Williamson at the University of Alberta for their direction and guidance and support over my undergraduate years (not to mention the umpteen reference letters they've written on my behalf). Thank you also to my students in Sections 77 & 78 for the many happy memories of teaching - the most rewarding aspect of my year here at Mac. Almost finally, thank you to Fiona Pitt-Kethley for reprinting the first edition of The Isle of Pines in her A Literary Companion To Sex, (it was a gift, honest). Yet another contemporary testimony to the saucy libertinism of Neville! Without Pitt-Kethley's recent reproduction of the story, I might have never read Neville's little known-text, and consequently, this thesis may never have been written. I appreciate the cooperation and assistance I received from the Interlibrary Loans staff at McMaster University and the University of Alberta and special thanks to the Bodleian Library for permitting me to reprint The Isle of Pines with this thesis. Lastly, I cannot omit a number of colleagues and friends who have been supportive here in Stealtown, Doug age. Fac ut gaudeam 3 Gessell, Rob Proeliator fuissem 4 Brazeau, Neil Tu, mitis turpis 5 Stubbs, and Neville Ita vero, esne comoedus?6 Newman. I know I have missed many people from my list but if 7 your listening,labra lege - there will be no new faxes. You know who you are. Quae narravi, nullo l1wdo negabo. 8 3 Go ahead. Make my day. 4 I could've been a contender. 5 You dirty rat. 6 A comedian, huh? 7 Read my lips. 8 That's my story and I'm sticking to it. vi I dedicate this thesis to the memory of my father Gordon Edward Schwanke (1924-1981) who never had the opportunity of attending university, but who recognized its importance and value. I think he would be proud of my academic accomplishments thus far. vii Introduction Though nothing suffocates humour more swiftly than a thesis, the comic muse will never lack commentators. - Walter Nash The Language of Humour 1668 was an eventful year for cultural and scientific achievements in England. In this year John Dryden became poet laureate of England, Issac Newton constructed the first reflecting telescope, and Aphra Behn published Oraanoko. 1668 also marks the year that Henry Neville published his literary hoax, The Isle of Pines. Although his political tracts such as Piato Redivivus earned him a philosophical reputation as opposed to any trace of literary respectability, the prose fiction of Henry Neville has been ignored or dismissed by many critics over the centuries. The Isle of Pines was Neville's fifth publication/ and by far his most successful. The story is a fanciful blend of travel narrative, utopian fiction, male fantasy, and a shipwreck tale. For this thesis I place The Isle of Pines in the encompassing genre of androcentric utopian travel narrative. Although the central charader George Pines's journey is short-lived before being cast permanently onto the island, the intrepid Dutch Traveller, Cornelius Van Sloetten's own journey consumes the greater part of the text. After examining a number of his works and recognizing the wit and complexity of the carefully written texts, I found the epithet "hack" an unjustified 1 For the purposes of this thesis, I accept the DNB and the NUC's suggestion that Neville wrote the texts in question. 1 2 term to be levelled against the seventeenth-century pamphleteer. "Hack writer" is a misnomer applied to Neville because the term implies that a writer employs his talents in pursuit of money and not art. Neville's social position, however, contradicts the hack label because his economic status enabled the writer and politician to write for enjoyment and for art's sake, and not financial gain as the "hack" critics argue. Like John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Neville was a wealthy amateur writer - "Roch€ster aptly compared their lot to that of a whore: enjoyment and ejection.,,2 Neville, of course, would not have been offended with such a comparison since a number of his lampoons concem€d the avails of prostitution as well as the excesses and the many diseases of the orifices attendant thereto. However, Neville would have been offended by the label "hack" because a hack writer produces dull, unimaginative, and trite work. If anything, Neville!s canon is the antithetical embodiment of its hack associations. Indeed, The Isle of Pines is not the work of a literary drudge as many critics have made it out to be. True! with his coarse lampoons such as The Parliament of Ladies and Nerves From the Nerv Exchange, Neville was certainly one enfant terribles of the Restoration. But as I will argue, Neville's reputation does not mean that this "Grub Street News,,3 is the product of a childish mind. On the contrary, the fraudulent pamphlet was a complicated and highly successful hoax in its own day, and its effects were still felt in Europe a century after its release. 4 For any hoax to be successful, the writer's fabricated story must contain an element of truth. The Isle of Pines is such a story. Neville's fictional deception depends on probabilities and consequently, it is based partially on fact. Neville's 2 See Roger Thompson's Unfit For Modest Ears p. 197. 3 In his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose defines Grub Street News as "lying intelligence." 4 See W. C.
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