The Creative Role of Parody in Eighteenth-Century English Literature
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Warsaw Institute of English Studies The Creative Role of Parody in Eighteenth-Century English Literature (Alexander Pope, John Gay, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne) Przemysław Uściński Doctoral dissertation written under the supervision of Professor Grażyna Bystydzieńska at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw Warszawa 2015 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The present study has been prepared under the supervision and with an invaluable support and encouragement from Professor Grażyna Bystydzieńska from the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. I would like to thank Professor Bystydzieńska in particular for her detailed comments and useful suggestions during the writing of the present study. I am also very grateful for being able to participate in numerous inspiring seminars and conferences organized by Professor Bystydzieńska. I would also like to express my gratitude to different literary scholars and experts in the field of Eighteenth-Century Studies for their helpful comments, suggestions, encouragement and inspiration, in particular to Professor John Barrell from the Queen Mary University of London; Professor Stephen Tapscott from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Agnieszka Pantuchowicz from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw; Professor David Malcolm form the University of Gdańsk; Dr. Maria Błaszkiewicz from the University of Warsaw, Professor Adam Potkay from the William and Mary College, Virginia. I wish to warmly thank Professor Emma Harris for encouragement and valuable advice throughout my M.A. and Ph.D. studies at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. I also want to appreciate the friendly support and insightful remarks I received from all my colleagues at the Ph.D. seminar run by Professor Bystydzieńska at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. 2 Contents Acknowledgments...................................................................................................... 2 Introduction................................................................................................................5 Chapter I Parody: Theoretical Aspects and Neoclassical Practices.......................................11 1.1 Theoretical Approaches to Parody. Bakhtin and Beyond......................................11 1.2. The Uses of Parody in English Neoclassical Literature........................................30 1.3. Scriblerian Textuality: The Relation between Parody and Satire.........................45 1.4. Conclusion............................................................................................................57 Chapter II Playing with Literary Conventions: Parodic Ambiguity in John Gay's The Fan, The Shepherd's Week and The Beggar's Opera ..................................................... 61 2.1. Introduction..........................................................................................................61 2.2. The Poetics of Graceful Parody in The Fan.........................................................62 2.3. The "Rustic Muse": Mock-Pastoral in The Shepherd's Week..............................72 2.4. "Better Company": Mock-Sentimental Politics in The Beggar's Opera..............82 2.5. Conclusion...........................................................................................................98 Chapter III Parodist as a Critic of Culture: Alexander Pope and The Dunciad ...................102 3.1. Introduction........................................................................................................102 3.2. Peri Bathous: the Anti-Sublime (Literary) Market............................................103 3.3. "Figures ill-paired": the Mock-Epic in The Dunciad.........................................108 3.4. In "darkness visible": Milton Travestied...........................................................122 3.5. Further into Darkness: Mock-Philology and the "Notes Variorum".................128 3.6. Conclusion..........................................................................................................136 3 Chapter IV Parody in Novelistic Discourse: Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne .............139 4.1. Introduction........................................................................................................139 4.2. Henry Fielding and "the Ludicrous instead of the Sublime".............................143 4.2.1. Travesty and Metafiction in An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews............................................................................................................144 4.2.2. Parodic Stylization in Joseph Andrews..................................................157 4.3. Fortifications of the Soul. Gentle Mockery and (Symbolic) Castration in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy..........................................................................172 4.3.1. Introduction: the (Anti)Structure of Shandean Parody..........................172 4.3.2. The Cultural Semiotics of Gentle Parody..............................................178 4.3.3. The Wound of Language.......................................................................185 4.4. Conclusion: Parody in the Novel.......................................................................203 Concluding Remarks ..............................................................................................207 Bibliography ............................................................................................................211 4 Introduction The thesis focuses on the role of parody in the literary works of four English writers of the eighteenth century: John Gay, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne. These authors were not selected randomly, but rather on the basis of a conviction that parody played a crucial role in their literary output. The major aim of the present dissertation is to analyze how the technique of parody allowed these authors to critically expose and creatively transgress the boundaries of genres and stylistic modes that they appropriated. Their experimental and innovative approach to literary traditions and conventions finds its expression in their playful literary texts. Instead of politely complying with established poetic formulas and protocols, these authors tended to expose the provisional nature of all ready-made genres and stylistic patterns, to mockingly reshape them and infuse their structures with their own peculiar sense of wit and satire. As a result, they produced a number of tricky, duplicitous, internally hybrid, ambiguous and self-reflexive texts that may today seem surprisingly "(post)modernist" given their extended intertextual and metafictional playfulness. The importance of parody in comic and satiric English literature of the eighteenth century has already been acknowledged, but the topic has generally received rather cursory treatment. Apart from an excellent study by Robert Phiddian (Swift’s Parody, 1995), the topic of parody has not been the central focus of any study on an eighteenth-century English literary author. Some parodic genres and forms popular in the period (burlesque comedy, mock-heroic poetry) have been studied and discussed extensively, but an emphasis has customarily been put on the history and development of these forms, which have been treated in isolation from other genres. The present study seeks to offer a more comprehensive depiction of the resonating presence of parody in the literature of the period. It discusses parody as a major technique of presentation and organization of artistic material, one that operates in 5 most diverse genres of poetry, drama and prose, thereby influencing almost the entirety of the literary landscape in the period under discussion. The role of parody in the evolution of literary forms and styles was emphasized by scholars known collectively as the Russian "Formalists", and later also by Mikhail Bakhtin, who saw in parody one of the major modes of artistic expression and representation, a thoroughly "carnivalesque" mode informed by the general tendency to twist, invert and mockingly distort dominant and official languages and representations. Some literary scholars and historians (Margaret Anne Doody, for instance) have underscored the paramount role of parody in neoclassical literature in general, and in the English "Augustan" literature in particular. The present study takes their theoretical findings (together with more recent scholarly work on parody) as a point of departure. Furthermore, in order to discuss any parodic work in a specific historical context, it is necessary also to briefly outline two intertextual elements that provide sources for parodic activity: the earlier traditions of parody in literature (they furnish a parodist with different tools and methods of parody), and the parodied traditions, genres, styles, or discourses (they provide what may be called the "raw material" for a given parodic text). In short, parody cannot operate in an intertextual vacuum – it rather feeds on the saturation of the cultural sphere with contradictory meanings, texts and styles (both parodic and parodied). The first section of Chapter I provides the theoretical rudiments for my discussion of literary parody: it starts with an overview of the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, but it also discusses the concept of parody in more recent theoretical and critical discourses. The second section briefly outlines the historical and cultural background of eighteenth-century parodic texts