ABSTRACT Title of Document: PRIVATE SCANDAL IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE: SEXUAL SCANDAL AS EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POLEMICS Joanne Willen Roby, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Directed By: Professor Laura J. Rosenthal, Department of English Changes in literary strategies and polemical contest in the early eighteenth century legitimized the use of sexual scandal as a means of attack in the mainstream commercial press. Authors embraced scandal to obscure and temper partisan conflicts that motivated animosities, and in doing so they sanctioned inquiry into the private lives of public figures. This strategic use of scandal emerged as a reaction against the political-religious polemics of the English civil war of the mid 1600s. The discourse of scandal developed as an alternative to the discourse of politeness, which similarly evaded explicitly partisan exchanges. Instead of using politeness to cultivate decorous public debate, some authors turned to scandalous (often calumnious) exposés because it allowed them to veil troubling conflicts while still venting animosities. Chapter One examines how early modern sexual libels were transformed after the civil war. I show how in The Rehearsal Transpros’d Andrew Marvell adapted these precedents into his religious polemics; he redirected them against a quasi-public target, the Anglican cleric Samuel Parker, in order to ridicule Parker as an individual. Chapter Two demonstrates how Delarivier Manley perfected this strategy of obfuscation in The New Atalantis. At moments of political crisis throughout the text, Manley’s political narrative pivots towards amatory encounters to distract readers from the crisis at hand. By casting her political tract as a sexual allegory, she legitimized the personalization, privatization and sexualization of political discourse. As Chapter Three illustrates, in the Tatler and Spectator Joseph Addison and Richard Steele repudiated the public’s appetite for scandal, but their very censures reflect that scandalous discourse permeated public debate. Although known for shaping the public sphere, in denouncing scandal, they revealed skepticism of the public’s ability to engage in rational dialogue. Chapter Four shows that Alexander Pope and his literary rivals adapted scandal as a means of satiric attack against each other—that is, against private figures in the public eye—to undermine one another’s cultural standing. I reveal the buried political-religious conflicts that motivated these hostilities, and I demonstrate that Pope refined his use of scandal as a literary tool throughout his career. PRIVATE SCANDAL IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE: SEXUAL SCANDAL AS EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POLEMICS By Joanne Willen Roby Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Advisory Committee: Professor Laura Rosenthal, Chair Professor Tita Chico Professor Gerard Passannante Professor Vincent Carretta Professor Clare Lyons © Copyright by Joanne Willen Roby 2012 ii Acknowledgements This project and my development as a scholar have benefited in innumerable measure from the dedicated mentorship I have received from my advisory committee. I would especially like to thank Laura Rosenthal for the invaluable insights, time, and patience that she generously dedicated to guiding me through the process of writing this dissertation. Her detailed attention to my arguments prompted me to refine and sharpen my position and my style, and she helped guide me back to my original concerns and arguments when I was losing my way. Tita Chico, who first cemented my enthusiasm for the eighteenth century, provided unwavering support and guidance throughout my entire graduate career. Her comments helped me grow as a scholar by challenging me to think of large connections between texts. Vin Carretta and Jerry Passannante both provided much needed encouragement and insightful suggestions that helped me refine and clarify my thinking. I would also like to thank and remember the late Marshall Grossman who first introduced me to Andrew Marvell’s Rehearsal Transpros’d and helped influence the contours of my first chapter. He was always willing to travel into the eighteenth century with me, and he is deeply missed. Fellowships from the Department of English and the Graduate School at the University of Maryland helped me complete my work. I was also fortunate to receive helpful and collegial feedback on various chapters from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Dissertation Seminar led by Derek Hirst and Steven Zwicker (Fall 2009- Spring 2010) and the University of Maryland’s Eighteenth-Century Reading Group. I am also indebted to my friends and colleagues who read and discussed my work, who provided copious and helpful suggestions for revisions, and who kept me iii afloat through arduous semesters. Rebecca Lush, Elizabeth Veisz, Elizabeth Martin, Kelly Wisecup, Tasos Lazarides, Jasmine Lellock, Margaret Vasileiou, Andrew Black, Caroline Egan, and Stephanie Graham provided a cherished support system that guided me through to the end. Finally, I would like to thank my family. I literally could not have completed this project without them. My husband, Jeff Kong, provided support, encouragement, perspective, and delicious meals throughout the long process. The arrival of my son, Andrew, motivated me to meet deadlines, and he provided the best study breaks imaginable. And my parents, Jim Roby and Diane Willen, cheered me on throughout my graduate career. My mom in particular helped this project come to fruition; she always served as a valuable sounding board and critical reader, and I will be forever grateful. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................ii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... iv Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Seventeenth-Century Context for Eighteenth-Century Scandal: Marvell’s The Rehearsal Transpros’d ...................................................................... 20 Chapter 2: Titillating Distractions: Delarivier Manley and Politics as Sexual Scandal .................................................................................................................... 68 Chapter 3: Curbing Scandalous Exchange: Re-examining the Spectator and Tatler..................................................................................................................... 119 Chapter 4: Alexander Pope’s Scandalous Exchanges: Sexual Calumny in Augustan Wit ........................................................................................................ 160 Epilogue ................................................................................................................ 238 Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 246 1 Introduction In the late 1500s, scandalous rumors and verses circulated about Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, especially regarding her purported adulterous affair with the Earl of Bothwell. The affair was particularly sensational for the suggestion that she was complicit in plans to murder her husband, Lord Darnley. In England, Mary’s political opponents furnished love letters she supposedly wrote to Bothwell in their attempt to prove her guilt in Darnley’s murder. Gossip and rumors also at times enveloped Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with her courtiers, especially the Earl of Leicester, as subjects questioned the Virgin Queen’s sexual chastity. In addition to having direct bearing on questions of succession, Elizabeth and Mary’s sexual purity, or lack thereof, was understood as a reflection of their ability to manage and rule their countries.1 Five hundred years later, gossip and scandals about rich socialites, famous actors, and star athletes often dominate the news cycle. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, socialites Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian became celebrities, famous simply for being famous, propelled in large part by supposedly illicit sex tapes that were released to the public. In 2011 Kardashian made headlines for ending her 72-day marriage, and in 2009 Golf champion Tiger Woods damaged his public 1 See Carole Levin, “The Heart and Stomach of a King”: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 75-78; also see Julian Goodare, “Mary (1542–1587),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2007. 10 November 2011 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18248>. As I will discuss in Chapter One, male rulers, such as Mary’s son James I, were the subject of sexually scandalous rumors and libels as well. 2 persona after reports of his serial affairs surfaced and his wife left him. Emerging details on Wood’s affairs dominated the news cycle for days. How did we get from illicit rumors about the monarch to a media industry dedicated to covering the private lives of the rich and famous? While this cultural appetite for scandal, particularly sexual scandal, may now seem ubiquitous, changes in the discursive practices and literary strategies in the English commercial press in the late seventeenth and early