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Neo-Classical Satire: the Conservative

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Neo-Classical Satire: the Conservative NEO-CLASSICAL SATIRE: THE CONSERVATIVE DISSERTATION Presented In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for trie Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State Uni versIty By HAROLD JOEL HARRIS, A.B., M .A. The Ohio State University 1951+ Approved by: Adviser Table of Contents Chapter Fa/re Foreword ..... lii I The Socio-Hconoinlc Framework ............ 1 II The Uses of the Past ...................... 89 III The Limitations of Reason ................ lp.l|. IV Utopia ana Anti-Utopia ................... 185 V Summary FI 9 U' I b 1 i o p; r a o h y ............................ 2 y 2 ii A 4S1.45 FOREWORD The basic premise of this dessertation, as reflected in its title Neo-Class!cal Satire: The Conservative .'fuse, is tnat where one very important literary mode is concerns an entire age presents an almost solidly conservative iron But another premise which gives meaning to my steady is that conservatism wears many different faces. The conser­ vatism of Samuel Butler is quite different from that of Ned Ward and Tom Brown, and their conservatism is, in turn, at a far remove from that of John Arbuthnot, John Ja Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift. The conservatism, of the last named satiric quartet interests me parti cularl designated "dynamic conservativism, 11 for reasons which will appear later, it is the focal point of the disserta- ti on . But before the differences in conservative thought can take on any meaning, the framework within which they develop must be examined. Such a framework is ai hand in the list of key characteristics of 'Western conservatism drawn up by one of its representative Twentieth Century American spokesmen. These characteristics are; 1. an attempt to find a pattern in history "that may give some clues as to the possible and impossible in politics"; 2. distrust of human nature, which is viewed as a mixture of the rational and the irrational; ii i $. belief in "moral order In the universe In which man participates and from which he can derive canons or principles of political judgment"; [(_. belief that government should be limited in power; 5 . defense of the institution of property as opposed to defense of "particular arrangements by which goods are manufactured and distributed. Prom another representative contemporary conservative the English historian Keith Peiling, comes a strengthening of trie framework. According to Feiling, the first prin­ ciple lying behina the common cause made by British conser vatives has been "a skepticism, amounting to disbelief, in any purely intellectual process as the means to explain p rights and duties, or to justify political obligation." As a corollary to this feeling, the British conservatives distrust such general notions as 'the community' "it is the people in all their sub-divisions and neighbourhoods and corporate Interests which constitute the community, and not vice-versa" and would argue that "the despotism of reason may cloak as much sinister interest and self- x deception as any other tyranny."' Unlike the traditional liberal, Felling says, the conservative is not by nature an individualist. Individual will cannot determine political obligation. We are born into a community, or rather an Interlocking; circle of communi­ ties; the most profound of our relationships, of husband to wife, of parent to child, of , neighbourhood, are by no means wholly voluntary.^- V Besides being a non-individualist who distrusts the intellect, the British conservative, observes Felling, is to an extent pessimistic, ' Conservatism's origins being Christian and therefore imbued with the conception of some 'fall,' conservatism, he says, "has retained a reserve, a certain pessimism as to man's unaided efforts or ideas abstracted from the diurnal course of stresses ano desires , " - In the satiric writings of Arbuthnot, Gay, Pope, and Swift, we see a marked reserve and more than a certain pessimism. And being doctrinally and emotionally closer to conservatism's Christian origins than are Felling's contemporary conservatives, they are more strongly "imbued with the conception of some 'fall.'" In respect of individualism these four men go beyond Felling's "pre­ scription": for them Individualism is the enemy, or at least one of the shapes that the enemy assumes. They are not, however, distrustful of the general notion 'the community,' although they are wary of the maneuvers that various members of the ruling group conduct behind that concept. They are certainly suspicious o.f the intellect and vehemently opposed to "any purely intellectual process" which sets itself up as "the means to explain rights and duties, or to justify political obligation." Pessimistic,' anti-individualistic, anti-intellectual (at least within vi certain ill-defined limits which I shall later attempt to draw), they are naturally distrustful of the "completely free person, the man beholden to no one but himself.'*^ In the neo-classical world there were not many men who enjoyed or even wanted that kind of freedom, but what­ ever men or institutions even let their p;aze wander in that direction, incurred the censure of these conservative writers. I have spoken of Arbuthnot, Gay, Pope, and Swift as though tney functioned as one when it came to defending the conservative position. Actually the differences be­ tween them as social thinkers and artists are considerable. Merely to suggest something of those differences, Swift, the Anglican clergyman, was far more influenced in his thought by Christian pessimism than was any of the other three men. Still their windows on the world adjoin, their satires differ significantly from those of their neighbors. Be­ cause the difference is in the direction of greater free­ dom from satiric conventions, less rigidity in their attitude toward existing institutions, and because their satire contains an explosive quality alien to conservative orthodoxy, I have chosen to call these artists dynamic conservatives. The dynamic conservative is first of all disinterest- 7 ed. That does not mean, however, that he is a free- floatinp, classless .i ndividual who feels he has no stake i n society. But as much as any man's beliefs can be separated out from the socio-economic frame within which they grow, his beliefs underlie the positions he assumes and the actions he engages in. lie does not, that is, formulate a rationale (consciously or unconsciously) to accord with the socio-economic attitudes most expedient for h.im to hold. How for this to be so the dynamic conservative must be ■ ■siven to the kind of thinking that most conservatives are not usually prone to. The realistic conservative to give a name to the generally of neo-elessieal satirists--- is often quite capable of examining the springs of his beliefs, but prefers not to since he respects chiefly power and the instruments .for obtaining it.^ And he has at his command a "battery of powerful weapons in the form of social authorities, institutions, laws, and conventions." In his satire he is likely to call on all of these forces. Where the realistic conservative (both as satirist and as non-satirist) almost instinctively attacks intellectuals and intellectual!sm because he regards the probing, critical intellectual process as an ever-present menace to things as they are, the dynamic conservative attacks them because of his reasoned conviction that they constitute a threat to that society which he sees as part of a continuum. The dynamic; conservative, not bound to a particular party but rather* to what he considers the whole society, is thus moved by different considerations than :ls the realistic conservative; and though he may seem to be moved to the same end, actually both his ends and his means of curbing the intellect are strikingly dissimilar to those of the realistic conservative. More aware of the various choices open to man and gifted witn an insight into the intellectual process, the dynamic conservative is intellectual in his anti-intellectualj sm. The life of the mind holds a fascina­ tion for hirn which borders on 1'ove, and where he is writing satire part of the esthetic effect he obtains results from the ambivalence wit a whi ch he approaches his v i c t i m . Perhaps the dynamic conservativeTs profound skepticism is the layer of his mind on which his anti-:t ntelle ctuali sm rests. He is at any rate militantly opposed to all schemes and systems that, springing full-blown from the intellect, make too light of human frailities. Above all he sets himself against that Utopianism which places a minimum value on existing reality. He is intensely aware of the flaws that run through his society, and convinced of the necessity for change, but he is fiercely critical of change which does net grow gradually and does not take sufficiently into account the enduring values in society. I X The dynamic conservative satirist respects the past without revering it, respects the intellect but denies it paramountcy, respects reform and change but only within severe limitations. lie is aware of a great many alter­ natives, something that his uni-dimensional realistic conservative brother is not. hy way into neo-classical satire, then, is via conser­ vatism, which is the social matrix in which it develops. After an examination of that mold, a consideration of some of its social, economic, political, and religious components, my study turns to the approaches to history made by dynamic conservatism its "uses of the past." Following' on that chapter are two very closely related chapters, one on the anti-intellectualism of dynamic conservative satire, the other on its anti-utopianism. Anti-utopianism is really a species of anti-intellectualism, but so important a species that I feel it necessary to devote a separate chapter to it. The principal figures in this study are, as I have already indicated, Arbuthnot, Gay, Pope, and Swift.
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