'A Rake's Progress'
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1. The Heir 2 e The Levee 3, Orgies 4. The Arrest 5. The Karria 6. The Gaming- House 7. The Prison 8, The Madhouse An Examination and Interpretation Narrative Features !A Rake's Progress 1 Robert L.S. Cowley Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of M,A. in the English Department, the Faculty of Arts, 1972. University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Synopsis A Rake's Progress is examined to discover in what ways a pictorial narrative can be narrative in a literary sense. The personality, actions, and background of the central character are considered from established literary-dramatic points of view in the body of the thesis. The Rake is seen as both a well-defined individual and a universal study of a reactionary who aspires towards ancient ideals; a mock-hero in a complex work. An explanation of misunderstood and neglected details is attempted and it is shown how they contribute effectively to what is thought to be a coherent work. It is argued that the heroine is not a pathetic and uiJFortunate addition to the story, but that she is an integral part of Hogarth's imaginative thought. His detached attitude towards her is considered as major evidence of a comic and melodramatic style. In the third part Hogarth's treatment of recurrent emblems is compared to the poetic purposes of iterative imagery and it is claimed that Hogarth's religious "imagery" shows that the progress is a multi- layered allegory. It is claimed in the conclusion that Hogarth manipulates his authorial viewpoint and chooses what he is prepared to disclose or not to disclose like a writer; that the symmetry of the work is comparable to the appearance of a short poem; that Hogarth's progresses offer a unique quality of multiplicity to the concept of narrative; that there is evidence which shows that Hogarth maintained a close relationship with his subscribers, anticipating that of Dickens \ that A Rake's Progress represents a transitional work between simple, picaresque fictions and philosophically more complex ones. 78,000 words With some imagination one can easily find a torso in every summer cloud, and a silhouette in every ink blot, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Acknowledgements I wish to thank Professor Ronald Paulson for giving an afternoon of his time to talk about Hogarth, his generosity and scholarship provided much inspiration? Dr Peter Davison for being prepared to comment with such constructive rigour; Miss H.M. Rogers of the Barber Institute for being so tolerant about the loan of booksj my wife for being a "right hand". Thesis that in the pictures of A Eake*s Progress William Hogarth presents a coherent and complex narrative that a spatial and representational art form may be discussed in terms usually associated with literary narrative that a pictorial narrative can have affinities with a literary narrative. Contents I* Introduction a. The Formulation of the Argument and the Limits of the Study ... f .......**«*-««» 1 b. The Form of the Study and the Development of an Approach .<*..„..*•••**•• ..... 8 c. The Importance of Reversal ........•••••*- 10 Terminology and Assumptions . ^ » » « • * «.**«*•• Ha. Tom Rakewell and his Progress . « « * « . ..,.««...... 20 The Laughing Audience (136/130) the Subscription. » , . .21 Ticket. Plate 1, The Heir (138/132) .,*,««,.......*. t9 Plate 2, The Levee (140/133) ....*,...••••••• 46 Plate 3, Orgies (141/134) ................. 60 Plate 4, The Arrest (143/135). ............... 7^ Plate 5, The Marriage (145/136) .............. 90 Plate 6, The Gaming House (147/137) ............ 101 Plate 7, The Prison (148/138) ............... .113 Plate 8, The Madhouse (149/139) .,..,*.»...... 123 lib. The Contribution of Sarah Young as a Recurrent Figure and Agent of the Sub-plot ............... 0 148 (i). Sarah's First Appearance (Plate l) .......... 149 (ii). Sarah's Second Appearance (Plate 4) ........ « 153 (iii). Images of Sarah's Presence (Plates 2 and 3) • • • » • 157 (iv). Sarah's Third Appearance (Plate 5) .......... 158 (v). Sarah's Fourth Appearance (Plate 7) .-••*••••••• 160 (vi). Sarah's Last Appearance (Plate 8)...,.,.... 163 (vii). An Evaluation of Sarah's Contribution to the Narrative ............. ...... 164 III. 'Symphonic Imagery* .......«...*....«...... 172 a. Fire and Disease .,,.«...*,.»»** ..... 174 b. Religious Imagery .................... 178 c. The Necklaces ...................... 189 IV. Conclusion; Hogarth, 'the Writer of Controlled Narratives* . , , . 200 Appendix One: Historical, Biographical, and Technical Background to the Publication of *A Rake's Progress*. 220 Appendix Two: Mercedes Gaffron's Catalogue of the Effects of the Glance Curve as Applied to Hogarth's ! The Laughing Audience (136/130) .............. 234 Bibliography ..................... ..,..«.. 239 List of Major Illustrations The paintings of A Rake's Progress .*«....•..•• frontispiece 1. The Laughing Audience (136/130) ........... opposite page 21 2. The Heir, Plate 1 (138/132) ............. opposite page 29 3* The Levee, Plate 2 (140/133) ... ^ ......... opposite page 46 4» Orgies, Plate 3 (141/134) •••••••••••*•• opposite page 60 5. The Arrest, Plate 4 (143/135) ............ opposite page 76 6. The Marriage. Plate 5 (145/136) ........... opposite page 90 J. The Gaming House, Plate 6 (147/137) ......... opposite page 101 80 The Prison, Plate 7 (148/138) .«*...».«»«»* opposite page 113 9. The Madhouse, Plate 8 (149/139) ............ opposite page 123 10. The Painter torn between Olympus and Everyday Life by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder ......... opposite page 127 The Hogarth Illustrations are taken from Ronald Faulson's Catalogue of Graphic Works, the earliest defined states. Gheeraerts' picture is reproduced from F. Wurtenberger's Mannerism. Minor illustrations occur throughout. These are not referred to directly in the text and so are not numbered. They show the later state variations j again based on Paulson's Catalogue, and are placed opposite appropriate pages in the text. TL Introduction la. The Formulation of the Argument and the Limits of the Study One of the earliest and noblest enjoyments I had when a boy was in the contemplation of those capital prints of Hogarth, the Harlot's and the Rake's progresses, which, along with some others, hung upon the walls of a great hall in an old-fashioned house. Charles Lamb 1 Lamb said truly that we "read" his prints, and "look" at other pictures. He might have added that the type is of the smallest, and the page is crammed to the margin. 2 Austin Dobson David Kunzle is at pains to establish the precise nature of narrative pictures: 'Narrative' is currently used to describe a wide range of sixteenth to eighteenth-century painting and engraving, especially Flemish and Dutch, of everyday or 'genre' social subjects in which typical figures are engaged in doing something fairly specific in familiar surroundings. Subsidiary episodes here are not used to project the situation backwards or forwards, and such pictures are not usually conceived in series of inherently connected scenes. By my definition 'narrative' can never be applied to pictures depicting a single moment in time. 3 Two aims of the thesis are, firstly, to discover exactly in what ways Hogarth's progresses are in accord with Kunzle's definition and, secondly, to see whether they can be said to be narrative in a literary sense. If it can be shown that a pictorial convention, the narrative progress, is coherent and that its component pictures can be apprehended in an orderly way, then the convention accords with Aristotle's definitions of literary plot. (Hogarth was ultimately influenced by Aristotle, according to Professor Ronald Paulson, through the neo-claseical art-critics and the aesthetics of the Spectator Papers. ) Aristotle argues that: The elements of the action must be so plotted that if any of these elements is moved or removed the whole is altered or upset. For when a thing can be included or not included without making any noticeable difference, that thing is no part of the whole. 5 and complications should develop out of the very structure of the fable, so that they fit what has gone before, either necessarily or probably. To happen after something is by no means the same as to happen because of it. Part II of the thesis is concerned with the degree to which the visual elements of Hogarth's art exist in causal relation to each other and with the degree to which a progress is a coherent and complicated whole. Claude Bremond, in discussing the cartoon strip, assumes that 'la bande dessinee. est un genre essentiellement narratif'. If the cartoon strip is a narrative form, then it is more likely that Hogarth's complicated series are essentially narrative, although they extend over fewer pictures than many cartoon strips. Bremond also argues that the idea of a narrative, its 'aventure', may be expressed in a variety of •7 forms. It is now known that the paintings of Hogarth's early progresses were subordinated to the needs of the prints and that the latter were frequently revised. A deeper insight into Hogarth's imagination may be arrived at from a comparison of one medium, the JB paintings, and another, the various engraved states. Hogarth devoted a chapter of his Analysis of Beauty to the way in Q which a spectator responds to an intricate visual form. He begins with the Aristotelean assumption that art is imitation and argues that 'this love of pursuit, merely as pursuit, is implanted in our natures'.