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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts THE SATIRIC NOVEL FROM FIELDING TO HOGG A Dissertation in English by Julian Fung © 2015 Julian Fung Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2015 ii The dissertation of Julian Fung was reviewed and approved* by the following: Robert D. Hume Evan Pugh Professor of English Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee John T. Harwood Associate Professor of English and Information Sciences and Technology Philip Jenkins Edwin Erle Sparks Professor Emeritus of the Humanities Nicholas A. Joukovsky Professor of English Debra Hawhee Professor of English and Communication Arts and Sciences Director of Graduate Studies *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT This dissertation is an overview of the British novel c. 1740–1830 from the perspective of a scholar interested in narrative satire. Many of the major novels in this period were considered by contemporary readers to be satires or at least to contain strong satiric elements, yet few scholars have attempted to explain how these novels use satire. Critics of individual novelists have, to varying degrees, treated their subjects as satirists—Smollett is frequently read as a satirist, as is Peacock. But these studies often do not give a sense of the sheer variety and diversity of this period’s novelistic satire. Though many works were thought to be satiric, they use satire in vastly different ways for various purposes. How much of a relationship exists between the satire of Smollett, Burney, and Bage, for instance? These novelists all write works containing satire, but they diverge in both tone and aim. In this study I want to provide a map of possibilities for narrative satire in this period, describing both the kinds of distinct satiric goals novelists pursue and the range of techniques they use to achieve them. Besides demonstrating variance in satiric aim and method, I also want to argue against the notion that satire and the novel are antithetical forms, and that novelistic satire declines after the mid-eighteenth century. Scholars of satire and the eighteenth-century novel have tended to argue that as the novel form grows in popularity, satire decays. The novel is often said to be incompatible with satire; critics have argued that novelists are too concerned with developing the realism of their plots and characters to make effective satiric attacks. The problem here is that these scholars have conceived of satire in narrow ways, not taking into account the breadth of satiric techniques novelists employ throughout this period. Just because few novelists in the late eighteenth century attempt to write novels similar to Smollett’s or Fielding’s does not mean that novelistic satire declines. iv In the first part of my study I discuss how satire has been conceived both by modern scholars and eighteenth-century readers, and I make the case that satire can have varying aims. I also develop a rhetorical approach to novelistic satire, focusing especially on how novelists attempt to control the judgments of their readers. In the four chapters of the second part, I focus on four major satiric aims: entertainment, instruction, pessimistic expression, and attack. As the examples in each chapter demonstrate, each of these satiric aims is a distinct enterprise. As satire is so often a central element of the novels of the period, understanding the multifarious ways in which it operates is important for our interpretations of these works. Where my predecessors see satire as a very specific genre that declines as the novel grows in popularity, I see a vibrant mode that is incorporated into the novel for a wide array of purposes. My goal is to give my readers a sense of this diverse and exciting range. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................... vii PREFACE ................................................................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... xv PART I: AN APPROACH TO NOVELISTIC SATIRE .......................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: SATIRE AND THE NOVEL FORM ........................................................... 2 I. Satire Theory and the Novel .................................................................................................... 4 II. What is a Satiric Novel? The Definitional Issue .................................................................. 12 III. The Variety of Satiric Aims ................................................................................................ 22 IV. Some Dogmas about Satire in the Novel ............................................................................ 34 V. Towards an Approach to Satiric Fiction .............................................................................. 54 CHAPTER TWO: DEDUCING AUTHORIAL AIM ............................................................. 60 I. Reading in Search of a Novel’s Purpose ............................................................................... 61 II. Arabella and the Problem of The Female Quixote ............................................................... 84 PART II: THE AIMS OF SATIRE ......................................................................................... 106 CHAPTER THREE: SATIRE AS ENTERTAINMENT: SMOLLETT, STERNE, AND PEACOCK................................................................................................................................. 107 I. Peregrine Pickle: Humor and Satire .................................................................................... 109 II. Tristram Shandy: The Performance of Satire ..................................................................... 138 III. The Various Uses of Satire in Peacock’s Novels.............................................................. 157 CHAPTER FOUR: INSTRUCTIVE SATIRE: FIELDING, GRAVES, AND BAGE ....... 178 I. Characteristics and Varieties of Instructive Satire .............................................................. 179 II. Types of Satiric Instruction in Fielding’s Novels .............................................................. 190 III. Sympathetic Satire in The Spiritual Quixote .................................................................... 212 IV. Irony as Satiric Instruction in Bage’s Hermsprong .......................................................... 233 CHAPTER FIVE: PESSIMISTIC SATIRE: COVENTRY, BURNEY, AND EDGEWORTH ......................................................................................................................... 258 I. The Possibilities of Pessimistic Satire ................................................................................. 260 II. Pessimistic Satire in Pompey the Little .............................................................................. 270 III. The Power of Social Custom in Burney’s Cecilia ............................................................ 280 IV. Castle Rackrent and Negative Uncertainty ....................................................................... 295 CHAPTER SIX: ATTACK SATIRE: INCHBALD, HAMILTON, AND HOGG ............. 313 I. Attack vs. Instruction: Psychological Realism in Inchbald’s Nature and Art ..................... 320 II. Mixed Aims in Memoirs of Modern Philosophers............................................................. 332 III. Attack and Provocation of Thought in Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner ............ 353 vi CONCLUSION: SATIRE IN THE NOVEL, 1740–1830 ...................................................... 379 I. The Rhetoric of Satire.......................................................................................................... 380 II. Satire and the Form of the Novel, 1740–1830 ................................................................... 384 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 397 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Types of Satire in the Novels of Tobias Smollett ......................................................... 137 Table 2. Different Methods of Attack ......................................................................................... 316 viii PREFACE This is a study of the various ways in which satire is practiced in the novel c. 1740–1830. Many of the major novels of this time period employ satire in varying ways, and were thought to do so by contemporary writers and readers. Tobias Smollett thought of himself as a satiric novelist, declaring in Roderick Random (1748) that “of all kinds of satire, there is none so entertaining, and universally improving, as that which is introduced, as it were, occasionally, in the course of an interesting story.”1 Astraea and Minerva Hill, writing to Samuel Richardson, claim that for all its faults Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) contains “just and pointed Satire”; Edmund Burke famously declared that Tristram Shandy (1759–67) was a “vehicle for satire on a great variety of subjects.” Later in the period, Samuel Hoole’s poem Aurelia (1783) describes Frances Burney as a satirist lashing the vices of avarice and pride.2 Satire continues to be written in novel form into the nineteenth century: an 1829 article in the Monthly Magazine on “Novels