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University of Plymouth PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk 04 University of Plymouth Research Theses 01 Research Theses Main Collection 2019 'Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763): Agency, Authority and the "female spirit of contradiction"''Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763): Agency, Authority and the "female spirit of contradiction"' Lester, Michelle Marie http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/14727 University of Plymouth All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. Copyright Statement This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author’s prior consent. 1 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763): Agency, Authority and the ‘female spirit of contradiction’ by Michelle Marie Lester A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfilment for the degree of Research Masters Faculty of Arts and Humanities January 2019 2 Acknowledgements This research project has been more than twenty years in the dreaming, and there have been a few people who have cheered me on throughout all that time, never doubting or losing confidence in me, even when my own self-belief was hard to muster. In one of those odd twists of fate, Dr. Rachel Christofides has been there from the beginning, from when I first embarked on a postgraduate course based at Rolle. Pregnancy with my second son would put paid to that attempt, but Rachel would join my supervisory team in the latter stages of this one, and her help last summer kept me afloat. I cannot thank the wonderful women of my supervisory team enough. It was Dr. Kathryn Gray who first heard my proposal, and who has steered me kindly, humorously but with rigour to the finishing line. Without Dr. Bonnie Latimer, I’m not sure I would ever have quite found my way to this extraordinary period and Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters. Thanks must go, too, to Professor Angela Smith, whose friendship I have enjoyed since our boys went to nursery together, and whose no-nonsense support has guaranteed that there’d be no turning back. Women and friendship are constants that have helped to see this project to fruition, and a big load of love goes to Chelvi and Vicki. During many a café visit, they have listened to my convoluted outpourings and convinced me that I have something to say. Without the support of my dear friend and Head of Faculty, Dee, who ensured that my timetable would accommodate the ResM, I could not practically have undertaken the degree. My lovely colleagues in ELB have listened and encouraged, even when I’m sure they would rather not have their busy brains assailed with tales from the Eighteenth Century! 3 The greatest thanks go, of course, to my two beautiful boys, Joe and Luke. During the time that I have been working on this thesis, Joe has graduated with a first-class degree and is now himself doing a Masters. He has been my study-buddy and an irrepressible retriever of obscure sources! Luke, too, has finished GCSEs and A’ Levels, and will soon leave for uni himself. Both have tolerated having a mother umbilically-attached to her laptop, and I’m looking forward to being back in their lives. Finally, in a ‘female spirit of contradiction’ of my own, I reject Adrian’s assertions that there is nothing to acknowledge him for. Him I thank for his unwavering love and support, for undertaking solo dog-walks and far more than his fair share of housework, and for enduring lonely weekends. At our kitchen table, he has shared my obscure enthusiasms and joined me in plotting travels of our own. Let our next adventure commence! 4 Author’s Declaration At no time during the registration for the degree of Research Masters has the author been registered for any other University award without prior agreement of the Doctoral College Quality Sub-Committee. Work submitted for this research degree at the University of Plymouth has not formed part of any other degree either at the University of Plymouth or at another establishment. A programme of advanced study was undertaken, which included the following taught modules: • MAEL700 Research Methods and Debates in Literary and Cultural Studies • MARE700 Research in the Arts and Humanities Word count of main body of thesis: 24,851 Signed: …………………………………………… Date: 14/07/2019…………………………………. 5 Michelle Marie Lester: ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763): Agency, Authority and the “female spirit of contradiction”’ Abstract The Turkish Embassy Letters is considered both inaugural and atypical of women’s travel writing, and scholarship is largely orientated around Montagu’s focus on women and their lives in the different countries she travelled to and stayed in between 1716 – 18. While this dissertation maintains a primary engagement with gender, it evaluates the text’s participation in myriad discourses and genres of the Restoration and early Augustan period. The cultural conditions that saw a significant growth in female participation in the world of print and, thereby, in intellectual exchange with men - often in writings loosely operating within a ‘Republic of Letters’ - act as the shaping context for my analysis of her construction of agency and authority in her epistolary travel narrative. The dissertation begins with a rare consideration of the Letters’ emulation of popular ‘Grand Tour’ narratives and examines how Montagu self-fashions as a female Grand Tourist. I propose that Montagu’s ‘double-voiced’ strategy of conformity and repudiation, while characteristic of proto-feminist writing of the day, effects the innovation for which the text is often acclaimed. Attention to Montagu’s use of satire, imitation and translation gives rise to analyses of her letters to Alexander Pope and Antonio Conti which at least partially challenge conventional accounts of her friendship with each of these ‘Men of Letters’ and propose the subversive elements of her correspondence. I conclude with an examination of Montagu’s negotiation of the role of motherhood, rarely a focus of scholarship of a text nevertheless written by a 6 woman who travelled to Turkey with a young son and there gave birth to a daughter. I argue that Montagu’s Letters demonstrate a preoccupation throughout with the social and cultural roles available to women, while a consistent attention to the narrative unity of the Letters offers a reading which sees the text’s form as paradigmatic of Montagu’s message of unity over division. 7 List of Contents COPYRIGHT STATEMENT .................................................................................................... 1 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU’S THE TURKISH EMBASSY LETTERS (1763): AGENCY, AUTHORITY AND THE ‘FEMALE SPIRIT OF CONTRADICTION’ .................................................................................................................. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................ 3 AUTHOR’S DECLARATION................................................................................................... 5 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. 6 LIST OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................ 8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ................................................................................................... 10 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 12 FROM MANUSCRIPT TO PUBLICATION, 1718 - 1763 ............................................................... 14 THE TURKISH EMBASSY LETTERS: LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................... 18 CHAPTER OUTLINES................................................................................................................ 24 CHAPTER 1: THE FEMALE GRAND TOURIST............................................................... 28 THE ‘ARISTOCRATIC’ GRAND TOUR: PHENOMENON AND DISCOURSE .................................. 30 ‘MALE-TRAVELS…STUFT WITH THE SAME TRIFLES’: RICHARD LASSELS’ VOYAGE OF ITALY (1670) AND MONTAGU’S LETTER 46 ...................................................................................... 32 ‘I LIKE TRAVELLING EXTREMELY, AND HAVE HAD NO REASON TO COMPLAIN OF HAVING HAD TOO LITTLE OF IT’: MONTAGU’S JOURNEY NARRATIVES ................................................................ 38 MONTAGU’S JOURNEY NARRATIVES: LETTER 24’S EXEMPLIFICATION OF THE GRAND TOUR NARRATIVE ............................................................................................................................. 40 MONTAGU’S JOURNEY NARRATIVES: LETTER 45 INVERTING SANDYS’ JOURNEY THROUGH THE MEDITERRANEAN ............................................................................................................ 44 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................................