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The Novels of Tobias Smollett: a Study in Structures

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The Novels of Tobias Smollett: a Study in Structures This dissertation has been 64—1308 microfilmed exactly as received WEBSTER, Grant Thompson, 1933- THE NOVELS OF TOBIAS SMOLLETT: A STUDY JN STRUCTURES. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1963 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE NOVELS OF TOBIAS SMOLLETT: A STUDY IN STRUCTURES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University % By Grant Thompson Webster, B. A., A.M. The Ohio State U niversity 1963 Approved by Adviser Department of English CONTENTS Chapter Page I . CRITICAL CATEGORIES ......................................................................... 1 I I . RODERICK RANDOM................................................................................. 26 H I . PEREGRINE PICK LE............................................................................. 59 IV. FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM................................................................ 93 V. SIR LAUNCELQT GREAVES..................................................................... 118 VI. HUMPHRY CLINKER................................................................................. 1^1 V II. CONCLUSION.......................................................................................... 179 APPENDIX A. DEFINITION OF "NOVEL".......................................................... 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................... 190 AUTOBIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................... 197 ii CHAPTER I CRITICAL CATEGORIES As a novelist, Smollett has been judged much as the little girl in the nursery rhyme was; when he was good, he was very very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid. For sixty years after his death, Smollett was thought to be good. He was admired by such great literary men as Dickens and Scott, and his place seemed assured as the peer of Richardson and Fielding and the patron of the sailor in English fiction. In the 1830's, however, Smollett1s novels were replaced in the public favor by those of Scott, and Smollett was condemned as immoral by prudish Victorian readers, including John Ruskin, who said in 1840; "I cannot, for the life of me, understand the feelings of men of magnificent wit and intellect like Smollett and Fielding, when I see them gloating over and licking their chops over nastiness, like hungry dogs over ordure; founding one half of the laughable matter of their volumes in innuendoes of abomination."^ Since the mid-nineteenth century, as a glance at a bibliography will show, critics of Smollett have been 2 preoccupied with biographical and historical questions. When critics ^John Ruskin, Works, ed. E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, 39 vols. (1903-12), I , 4-17-18. 2The standard account of Smollett's literary reputation is Fred W. Boege, Smollett's Reputation As a Novelist (194?). For bibliography, see; the "Special Studies" section of CHEL. for example; 24 of 40 entries are overtly historical or biographical. See CBEL. Ill, 450. 1 have tried to analyze the structure of his work, they have been hampered by critical categories which are vaguely defined and not comprehensive enough to explain the totality of Smollett1s work. Their failure is witnessed by the astonishingly small amount of criticism done on Smollett. The chief categories they have applied to his fictional structures ares travel literature, the picaresque, comic romance, and drama. We w ill examine these categories only to dismiss them, and our dismissal has two theoretical grounds. First, all of the terms in which Smollett's novels have been described have been used in so many ways that they have several meanings, often contradictory, and i t is impossible to use them to mean any one thing. Second, the terms used have no relation to each other, and it is hence impossible to consider the totality of Smollett's work by using these limited categories, useful as they may be for other authors. In Snollett the themes and structures of many traditions have been used, and they must be treated within a coher­ ent c r itic a l stru ctu re or else criticism becomes im p ressio n istic or incomplete. In this chapter, then, we will consider, briefly what other critics have been able to say about Smollett's structures, and will present a series of paradigms by which we hope to say more. The pattern of travel literature has been applied to anoliett by George M. Kahrl in Tobias Smollett Traveler-Novellst (19^) • In his remarks on structure in his summary chapter, Kahrl says that "the influence of travel is discernible not only in a few characters, in separate chapters, and in the form of his composition, but also in his habitual method of composition.... His characters are usually strangers or travelers in novel /sicj surroundings.... With the exception of Fathom, the novels conclude with the return of the principal characters to their homes.... Smollett imaginatively projected himself into many of the characters and scenes simply because he himself was an alien for most of his life and permanently retained the point of view of a traveler" (p. 148). Although the genetic fallacy is not strictly applicable here, it is not true to say that Smollett chose to write about travels "simply" because he lived in an alien country and traveled widely. One need only call to mind Robert Burton writing about travels from his Oxford study, or James Joyce writing about the streets of Dublin while in Trieste, to see that travelers do not necessarily write about travels, nor are travels necessarily written about by travelers. More important than this argument from theory is the fact that Kahrl offers no evidence for the causal influence of travel literature on Snollett except the general, and undescribed, resemblance between the form of Smollett's novels, his Travels through France and Italy, and picaresque literature in general. Hence, in our reading of Smollett's novels, we will take account of the elements of travel literature as they seem relevant, but for reasons which we will set forth in due course, we will include the form within the general plot paradigm of romance• The second category which has traditionally been applied to Smollett is the picaresque, a form invented by the Spanish and named after the hero, the picaro. In a conventional definition, "picaros were usually porters, errand boys, or the like, and were identified as crafty, sly, tattered, hungry, unscrupulous, petty thieves.... Thus the picaro was an. anti-hero, often parodying the heroes of knight errantry; the picaresque novel represents the beginning of modern realism." In form, "the picaresque novel is autobiographical and episodic in nature and ... is a series of episodes connected by a framework ... the unifying frame­ work is the character of the picaro himself, who recounts his own experiences as he passes from the service of one master to another. Naturally these novels rarely come to a clearly defined end...."3 These generalizations of the literary historian are based on a small group of Spanish and French novels, chiefly the Spanish: Lazarillo de Tonnes (155^; trans. 1586 by David Rowland); Guzman de Alfarache by Mateo Aleman (1599* tra n s . 1623 by I . Mabbe); Marcos de Obregon by Vincente Espinel (1618; trans. 1618 by Algernon Langton); and la Vida del Buscon by Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (1625; trans. 1657 by J . D .); and the French: Le roman comique by Paul Scarron (1651-57; tra n s . 1676); and Gil HLas by Alain Rene Le Sage (1715; trans. 1732-37). Of these novels, Lazarillo and Guzman are mentioned by Staollett, and Gil Bias was translated by Smollett in 17^, so the picaresque novels were undoubtedly influential on Smollett's conception and practice of the novel. It is difficult to say what this influence was, however, since the picaresque novels cited differ greatly in content, tone, character­ ization, and style. Beyond the general characteristic of "loose" or "episodic" structure, and a plot centered around an adventuring hero, there are no common characteristics which we can abstract from these novels, and, reflecting this, the term has been used in a way so general 3 Richard Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, A New History of Spanish Literature (1961), pp. 179» 180. as to become meaningless. An example of confused writing about the "picaresque" is found in Baker's The History of the English Novel: Ferdinand Count Fathom may be described as a so rt of pica­ resque novel having a thorough-going miscreant instead of a general rogue as its central figure, and an intricate plot superimposed.... Smollett committed the capital mistake of twisting to didactic purposes a story that should have been toil either in the spirit of devil-may-care picaresque comedy or with the cool irony of Fielding's Jonathan Wild.** Because of the confusions in the meaning of picaresque, and the sharing of its characteristics with other literary categories such as travel literature, rogue literature, criminal biography, and epic novels, the term is better discarded, and the many characteristics and devices asso­ ciated w ith i t w ill be subsumed under a more system atic s e t of categ o ries. The third critical pattern often used to describe the novels of the eighteenth century is "the comic romance." Like the picaresque, this term is essentially undefinable in functional terms; unlike "picaresque," its intended meaning is exactly defined, in
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