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UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title "The Language of Trade": Rhetoric, Power, and the Commercial Identity in Eighteenth- Century British Fiction Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/56f8d2kg Author Domzalski, Danielle Rose Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE “The Language of Trade”: Rhetoric, Power, and the Commercial Identity in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English by Danielle Rose Domzalski Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Ann Van Sant, Chair Associate Professor Daniel Gross Professor Emeritus Robert Folkenflik 2016 © 2016 Danielle Rose Domzalski TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii CURRICULUM VITAE iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: “The Morals of a Bookseller”: Robert Dodsley, 46 Commercial Rhetoric, and the British Stage CHAPTER 2: “Equally Useful”: Virtue and the Occupational 95 Contract in Samuel Richardson’s Novels CHAPTER 3: “Too Free to Bear Servitude”: Robert Bage, 145 Commercial Culture, and the Radical Novel BIBLIOGRAPHY 194 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My greatest thanks are due to Ann Van Sant, my committee chair, who never lost faith that I could make an argument without first offering seventy pages of (vital!) context. Her guidance has been tireless, patient, and always insightful. I am very grateful to Daniel Gross, who helped me to situate my dissertation more effectively among existing academic conversations. I am also indebted to Robert Folkenflik, who offered me invaluable expertise and a fresh perspective as I entered the home stretch. I would like to thank the UCI Graduate Division, whose financial assistance made it possible for me to devote three months to research and revision in England. Thanks also to the wonderful Wolfson Centre staff at the Library of Birmingham, who helped me both locate needed manuscript letters and operate their temperamental microfiche machine. Finally, I could not have finished this dissertation without the support of my family. Rose and Margaret, I appreciate your encouragement and patience throughout my interminable working sessions in the big green chair. Shawn, you have been my rock—I love you more than I can say. iii CURRICULUM VITAE Danielle Rose Domzalski EDUCATION University of California, Irvine PhD in English, June 2016 Dissertation: “The Language of Trade”: Rhetoric, Power, and Commercial Authorship in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction Advisor: Ann Van Sant University of California, Irvine MA in English, June 2004 Pepperdine University BA in English, summa cum laude, April 1999 RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS Restoration and 18th-century British literature; history of rhetoric; commercial and polite authorship AWARDS UCI Regents Fellowship (2002) UCI Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship (Fall 2015) PRESENTATIONS Presenter. Extracts from “The Language of Trade”: Rhetoric, Power, and Commercial Authorship in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction. UCI Graduate Dissertation Colloquium. April 14th, 2015. EXPERIENCE 2002 Teaching Assistant, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine 2003-04 Lecturer, Composition Program, University of California, Irvine 2004-06 English Teacher, Providence High School, Burbank 2011-16 Lecturer, Composition Program, University of California, Irvine 2013-14 English 28 Coordinator, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “The Language of Trade”: Rhetoric, Power, and Commercial Authorship in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction By Danielle Rose Domzalski Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Irvine, 2016 Professor Ann Van Sant, Chair In Origins of the English Novel, Michael McKeon distinguishes between assimilationist and supersessionist iterations of the progressive narrative form; while most texts remain fundamentally elitist, he writes, supersessionist texts “seek the legitimation of a humble social group in its own terms.” The disparity signals the presence of distinct, competing social fractions within the eighteenth-century middling sort: a polite, assimilationist fraction, and a more supersessionist trade and manufacturing community, which I term the commercial fraction. I argue that commercial authors have been consistently overlooked or misread by contemporaries and modern critics; the genteel authors and audiences who dominated contemporary literary discourse read commercial texts through the distortions of a polite lens, while modern literary scholars have based their analyses upon—and thereby perpetuated—these flawed ‘translations.’ Although scholars have studied commercial authors such as Samuel Richardson as agents of an undifferentiated ‘middling’ culture, there has been no recognition of a tradition of distinct commercial rhetoric, no sustained analysis of the commercial fraction’s engagement with polite discourse. v My introduction unpicks the intertwined strands of middling culture to discuss the commercial sort “in its own terms,” analyzing the social and rhetorical patterns in autobiographies and conduct treatises written by members of Britain’s commercial population. In the following chapters, I analyze commercial fiction as counterdiscourse, focusing primarily on three authors: Robert Dodsley, Samuel Richardson, and Robert Bage. These authors interrogate the polite dominance of public discourse—and empower themselves—by appropriating and rewriting its linguistic signs. They redefine virtue to privilege practical, self-interested conduct, including ambition, manual labor, and time management, and their texts reinterpret power by figuring the social contract as a decentralized and situational network of bonds rather than a unified, natural hierarchy. My dissertation ultimately encourages further scholarly engagement with the concept of commercial authorship. I argue, for instance, that commercial rhetoric created greater space for portrayals of empowered women, and it may have shaped the late-century radical interest in subaltern independence and agency. Studying patterns of commercial rhetoric allows us to interrogate conventional misreadings and opens up new ways to assess the intersections among eighteenth-century texts. vi INTRODUCTION As the first king of Bohemia kept his country shoes by him, to remind him of whence he was taken, I have put a motto on the doors of my carriage, constantly to remind me to what I am indebted for my prosperity, viz. “SMALL PROFITS DO GREAT THINGS.” …. And I assure you sir, that reflecting on the means by which this carriage was procured adds not a little to the pleasure of riding in it. ---James Lackington, Memoirs of James Lackington In his 1791 Memoirs, James Lackington reports that his rapid rise in status from impoverished shoemaker to wealthy bookseller has occasioned a degree of public opprobrium— especially his acquisition of a carriage and liveried servants, status symbols normally reserved for the social elite.1 Lackington, however, ostentatiously embraces and usurps these genteel forms; he has inscribed his carriage with his trade motto, thereby using his ‘polite’ equipage to advertise his common origins, his ambitions, and his business to the public gaze. The elegant carriage becomes, in his hands, a vehicle of trade culture—and his emphasis on the “pleasure” he derives from his commercialized carriage suggests that he recognizes the transgression. Lackington’s rhetorical move reflects a technique practiced by commercial writers from Daniel Defoe to Robert Bage, who appropriated the fundamental signs of genteel culture and reinterpreted them to privilege their own values. In this dissertation, I argue that these authors constitute a largely unrecognized subset of the middling sort, a fraction consistently overlooked or misread by their contemporaries and modern critics. Like Lackington, they create a form of supersessionist discourse by writing commercial rhetoric into polite structures. 1 James Lackington, Memoirs of the first forty-five years of the life of James Lackington, (London: J. Lackington, 1791), 234. 1 The Supersessionist Narrative Barriers to recognizing commercial rhetoric are partly rooted in vexed, inconsistent literary discussions of the middling sort itself. I base my references to “the middling sort” in the consensus definition used by current historians, who broadly agree that urban-based independent work is central to that rank; the middling sort thereby encompasses merchants, tradesmen, shopkeepers, manufacturers, and professionals—but not minor gentry, servants, or journeymen.2 However, literary scholars tend to engage the middling sort in more tentative and problematic ways; many critical texts reference the concept of a “middling sort” or “middling ranks” without any definition at all,3 and in others the terminology is susceptible to slippage.4 The issue is further vexed because late Stuart and Georgian Britons described their own society in widely 2 In the past two decades, Keith Wrightson and Shani D’Cruze have suggested that middling Britons were those who needed an occupation—because they could not earn a living from rents or investments—yet did not have to labor directly for an employer. See Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000), 290; Shani D’Cruze, “The Middling Sort in Eighteenth-Century