Stoic Enlightenments
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Copyright © 2011 Margaret Felice Wald All rights reserved STOIC ENLIGHTENMENTS By MARGARET FELICE WALD A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in English written under the direction of Michael McKeon and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2011 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Stoic Enlightenments By MARGARET FELICE WALD Dissertation Director: Michael McKeon Stoic ideals infused seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought, not only in the figure of the ascetic sage who grins and bears all, but also in a myriad of other constructions, shaping the way the period imagined ethical, political, linguistic, epistemological, and social reform. My dissertation examines the literary manifestation of Stoicism’s legacy, in particular regarding the institution and danger of autonomy, the foundation and limitation of virtue, the nature of the passions, the difference between good and evil, and the referentiality of language. Alongside the standard satirical responses to the ancient creed’s rigor and rationalism, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poetry, drama, and prose developed Stoic formulations that made the most demanding of philosophical ideals tenable within the framework of common experience. Instead of serving as hallmarks for hypocrisy, the literary stoics I investigate uphold a brand of stoicism fit for the post-regicidal, post- Protestant Reformation, post-scientific revolutionary world. My project reveals how writers used Stoicism to determine the viability of philosophical precept and establish ways of compensating for human fallibility. The ambivalent status of the Stoic sage, staged and restaged in countless texts, exemplified the period’s anxiety about measuring up to its ideals, its efforts to discover the plenitude of ii natural laws and to live by them. Beginning with Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus and Addison’s Cato, the most steadfast of heroes, and ending with Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, the most unaccountable of knaves, the texts I examine articulate a call to be at once more reasonable and more resolute, less inert and less contradictory, at a time when the age-old safeguards of order – the church, the king, and received wisdom – were contested. My readings of Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, Richardson’s Clarissa, Fielding’s Amelia, Johnson’s Rasselas, Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and Pope’s Essay on Man trace a reconstitution of world harmony made possible through stoic enlightenments. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………ii INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….………………1 CHAPTER 1: SELF-GOVERNMENT IN BRUTUS AND CATO……………………9 Stoic Relations…………………………………………………………………..9 Eighteenth-Century Roman Heroes……………………………………………..12 All in the Family………………………………………………………………....14 Classical versus Christian Models………………………………………………..20 Bloody Tyranny in Lucius Junius Brutus……………………………………............23 Addison’s and the End of Liberty……………………………………………….37 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………....48 CHAPTER 2: STOIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF VIRTUE IN THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, CLARISSA, & AMELIA………………………………………………50 The Stoic Inheritance………………………………………………………….…54 Christianity or Stoicism?.....................................................................................................60 Virtue’s Limits and the Problem of Reward………………………………………66 The Benefits of Moral Reform…………………………………………………....69 The Economy of Stoic Sociability………………………………………………...73 Determinations of Worth………………………………………………………...76 Clarissa’s Duty…………………………………………………………………....83 The Question of Desert………………………………………………………….94 Advancement in Amelia………………………………………………………….101 iv The Source of Vice………………………………………………………………105 The Resources of Virtue…………………………………………………………107 Stoic Views………………………………………………………………………113 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………122 CHAPTER 3: RULING PASSIONS IN RASSELAS, A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, AND PRIDE & PREJUDICE…………………………………………………………..124 The Nature and Representation of Common Conceptions………………………134 Happiness in Rasselas………………………………………………………...…...137 The Experience of A Sentimental Journey………………………………………......152 Misconceptions in Pride & Prejudice………………………………………….........162 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………176 CHAPTER 4: THE WORLD-VIEW OF POPE’S ESSAY ON MAN: A STOIC AESTHETICS…………………………………………………………………………..178 Reason’s Limits………………………………………………………………….183 Pope’s Divine Perspective……………………………………………………….189 Rational Activity………………………………………………………………....195 The Nature of Conflict…………………………………………………………..208 The Pursuit of Happiness………………………………………………………..212 Final Reckonings………………………………………………………………...219 CHAPTER 5: WORDS THAT MOVE IN STERNE’S TRISTRAM SHANDY……….221 The Untold Story………………………………………………………………..221 Sterne’s Sources………………………………………………………………....232 Shandean Association…………………………………………………………...244 The Universality of Abstraction………………………………………………....252 v Hypocrisy……………………………………………………………………….263 CONCLUSION: A STOIC END……………………………………………………....267 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………..270 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………...271 vi 1 -Introduction- The Stoic survives in the modern imagination as a calm ascetic, perturbed by nothing. Indeed, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, he was a familiar stock character, who, as Addison’s Cato and Fielding’s Parson Adams demonstrate, was not quite fit for this world. Hence the standard role of a Stoic in eighteenth-century texts is to discover the difficulty of maintaining his tranquility and upholding his ethical standards. His efforts to follow reason’s dictates have prompted critics since R. S. Crane and Henry W. Sams to explain how eighteenth-century figures, real and fictive, inhabited or dismissed Stoic rationality. In such accounts, Stoicism appears to be, more or less, a single, unvarying position, as rigid as the ancient sect could wish for. Yet the circulation of Stoic ideas in modern translations of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius and in contemporary philosophical texts – including Thomas Stanley’s History of Philosophy, Shaftesbury’s Characteristics, and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments – reflects the diverse and complex reception of Stoicism in the period. Against the popular conception of the rational Stoic as aloof and able to bear anything, we can set a host of other ways in which eighteenth-century texts registered and developed Stoic ideas in reaction to contemporary disputes about the institution and danger of political autonomy, the foundation and limitation of virtue, the epistemology of the passions, the distinction between good and evil, and the referentiality of language. My dissertation examines Stoic formulations in the poetry, drama, and prose of the period, which made many of the ancient philosophy’s ideals tenable within the framework of common experience. I position familiar figures like Cato and Parson Adams within larger literary movements to advance social, epistemological, and linguistic reforms. 2 Tracking eighteenth-century redactions of Stoic precepts shows how writers corrected the errors of the age by reconceptualizing the nature and validity of universal prescript. Eighteenth-century literary constructions of political order often identify Stoic heroes from Roman history, Brutus and Cato especially, as model patriots, even though they were leaders of resistance. With the failure of Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the crises of succession that followed, factionalism and the threat of civil war intensified, prompting writers to restage the conditions of political legitimacy. That Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus was quickly banned and then revised five times, while Addison’s Cato became a symbol of both Whig and Tory views, attests to the volatility and prominence of heroes whose Stoicism prompts them to sacrifice everything to preserve the liberty of the people. Julie Ellison reads Lee’s play as legitimizing political power through the renunciation of sentiment, juxtaposing the disinterested impartiality of Brutus’ Stoicism with the challenge and final suppression of Titus’ unruly feelings. I argue, in contrast, that these figures do not simply embody an opposition between Stoicism and sentiment, regulation and rebellion. Indeed, sacrificing all feeling to the rigor of law would be tyrannical, because then no one would be free to do what he/she wants. Both Brutus and Titus defend this liberty, the former by ensuring that no one is above the law and the latter by determining the law for himself. The degree to which liberty is nevertheless at odds with government is central to Addison’s play, in which the failure of self-command coincides with the collapse of the republic. Because Rome’s future is turned over to those of Roman character – Juba – rather than those of Roman blood, Ellison proposes, the disinterested and impartial spirit of republican rule becomes detached from place and race. So do the politics of slavery, in my reading. Hence, while Srinivas Aravamudan takes Juba’s Roman disposition to be the foundation of Whig colonialist discourse, I show how Addison’s play demands that self- 3 government transcend its administrative body and survive the ends of nationalism. Self- government, Addison demonstrates, isn’t compatible with the conquest of others. The principle of liberation needs to be redefined,