Next class, we've got quite a few things to take care of--three presentations being the most significant of that to-do list. I'd also like to be able to tie up a few remaining issues relevant to our discussion of Joseph Andrews.
Last class, we briefly considered the role of gender in Fielding's work, and I'd like to take that idea up again--especially insofar Fielding's narrator characterizes women (Mrs. Slipslop, Mrs. Tow-wowse, Lady Booby, Fanny Goodwill, and the several incidental characters who seem inevitably to represent the height of vanity and affectation, which Fielding's narrator describes as the chief concern of the novel).
I'd also like to discuss the way the narrator treats coincidence and the conventions of romance, and if possible, get your thoughts on the important metaphors of travel and dress in Joseph Andrews. You might like to compose your post around one of those topics, which will help kickstart our discussion.
For those of you presenting next class, you might also consider how these ideas could be incorporated informally into your presentations. This last is not necessary, but it might help keep our discussions on point.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Some thoughts on Joseph Andrews
Monday, March 12, 2007
A Case for Terseness
Watt's chapter on Fielding's epic theory of the novel raised some curious questions for me. Particularly his mention of the aversion Richardson and Defoe seemed to have for following the epic tradition spurred me to reconsider Watt's tracing of the development of the novel (Richardson's abohorrance of the violence was an interesting footnote). In following his reasoning, it occurred to me that the novel form could have been theoretically suited to the short form of the novellas of Haywood et al.
Watt focuses fully in his book on the social concerns that prompted the novel's "birth" (if, indeed, it could even be said to have an exact gestation and emergence), but in his chapter on Fielding and the epic turns his attention to the literary tradition the novel followed. In the beginning of the chapter, Watt quotes Defoe on Homer, and something Defoe said struck a chord with me, "the Poet never did much himself, only published and sold his Ballads still, in his own Name, as if they had been his own; and by that, got great Subscriptions, and a high Price for them" (241). It seems obvious to me he is referencing contemporary problems, rather than Homer's socioeconomic conditions. This quote reminded me of the ever-present influence of commercialism in the rise of the novel.
Watt explains the disinclination of two of the major formulators of the novel as a direct reaction to the (ironic) moral ambiguity of the traditional epic, and its faithlessness to fact. This led me to wonder at why the shorter novellas of the day were not popular with these writers, as they could be a direct formal refutation to the epic (which they seemed fixated on) that could match their content. Even Fielding, the heir apparent to the epic form, distanced himself in later years to patterning novels after epics (even in comic form). As Watt notes, "To call Fielding...'the founder of the English Prose epic' is surely to award him a somewhat sterile paternity" (259). It is interesting, then, that the novel has become identified largely by its sheer size. Why such importance given to length? The eighteenth century reading public wanted entertainment; the writers were paid by length (due to serials); the novel was destined commercially, not literarily, for length. If anything, the precise realism and moral instruction the early novels purported to extol would have better lent themselves to shorter works wherein such themes could be handled with acumen.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Presentation Schedule
Please note that I've eliminated the author presentation from our schedule; everyone will complete 2 novel presentations and 1 essay presentation.
February 12:
Michelle, Essay Presentation (Davis's Factual Fictions)
Liana, Novel Presentation (Journal of the Plague Year)
Febrary 26:
Laura, Novel Presentation (Pamela)
March 12:
Grace and Liana, Essay Presentation (Warner, Licensing Entertainment)
Michelle and Grace, Novel Presentation (Joseph Andrews)
March 19:
Kris and Alana, Novel Presentation (The Sentimental Journey)
April 2:
Grace and Michelle, Novel Presentation (Evelina)
April 16:
Kris, Essay Presentation (Paulson, "Gothic Fiction and the French Revolution" OR Sedgwick, "The Character in the Veil")
Alana, Novel Presentation (The Monk)
April 23:
Alana and Laura, Essay Presentation (Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction)
April 30:
Laura, Liana, and Kris, Novel Presentation (Emma)
Monday, February 26, 2007
Pamela as a virtuous girl
I think that the story Pamela is a very successful work of fiction especially considering its time of publication. Richardson also did a wonderful job of creating the character Pamela. I think that Pamela is obviously not the average teenage handmaiden of her time. She is bold, brazen, highly praised by almost everyone who crosses paths with her, and is of course "virtuous." But what truly is virtue in the story?
Pamela is presented as a young girl who was not born of any noteable means (at least we are not given reason to think so). She says that she was reared well and taught to value virtue and honesty even from her cradle. She goes on to tell how she was selected by her mistress, Mr. B's mother and taught to read and sew, and the art of being a gentlewoman in general. So, as readers, we see a young girl that had been separated from the time she was born and reared uniquely, being shown favors unknown to others born in her circumstances. So, we see a young girl who is used to attention and standing out from the crowd.
When her mistress dies, in the letter she writes to her parents, we hear her weeping and mourning her lady's loss to her parents. But as she writes, it seems that she remembers Mr. B and the attention and the unique treatment she is once again receiving and it seems that her tears dry and we can almost hear her smile in the words she writes: "O how my eyes overflow... so comes the comfort... my master said, 'I will take care of you all my good maidens, and for you, Pamela,' (and took me by the hand before them all)... I will be a friend to you" (43). So, Pamela shows herself as she is, self-absorbed.
It is also interesting how her account of the story paints the characters she does not like as physically ugly and appalling people. It quirks my curiousity if she is not stretching the truth concerning them. They (Mrs. Jewkes, Mr. B, Colbrand etc.) seem to be decent enough people when their intents are in tune with hers. When she is dissatisfied with them, she calls them devils and other names to her parents. We are told that she was completely innocent and completely virtuous and that her intent was to return to her parents homes. She wrote to her parents villianizing her master to him, but a simple change in attitude toward her from him was enough to have her flying back to him though he had sent her on her way to her parents. She did not even desire to see them first and then return to Mr. B.
She was aware of the power of her writing and never ceased to wield that power over from the day his mother died. She also fainted whenever he touched her or attempted to force himself on her, tightening her control on him, for each time she did, his mindless passion usually turned to empathy.
I also think it is interesting how the characters that she leads us to believe are trustworthy all sing her praises. I am not in doubt but that she is beautiful, but I think she wields some kind of power that they do not and is conscious of it. Apart from her education, her living in the spotlight from her mistress and then Mr. B, who unfortunately demanded a prize forr his attention from her.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Pamela's hand, and perspective based "Truth"
After our discussion on Monday, I started thinking more about the idea of the "hand." We covered this theme pretty extensively, but I'm interested in the specific aspect of Pamela's hand in the context of authority. In essence, Pamela's hand (which really belongs to Richardson) is an omnipotent narrator. Her voice, or her hand, is the supposed voice of authority, or the "True" voice of the novel.
This is where it gets interesting, to me. I've been toying with a thought for a while now, and it seems to relate perfectly to my feelings about authenticity in "Pamela." See, I'm a post-modernist (romantic post modernist?), and I don't believe that there IS a "truth" in this novel. I know that this is NOT a post-modernist novel, or at least wasn't written as one, but I think that it touches on one of the central arguments of post modernism.
For the purpose of this posting, I want to consider the novel as not written by Richardson, but actually written by the young Pamela. (Disregarding authorial intent and the lack of experience Richardson had at being a young girl) Pamela has a version of events that she relays to her parents, and her parents respond to her described events. Now, why should we believe Pamela? What about her letters make her a trustworthy narrator? Personally, I've found a couple of examples of why she shouldn't be relied on for truthfullness. Specifically, Mr. B refers to her as manipulative!! Also, the constant mentions of her beauty and the descriptions of the praises others lavish upon her imply a vanity that is unbecoming to a "virtuous" woman. To me, these numerous glimpses of narcissisom and egoism completely contradict her purported goodness. There's a couple of other instances that I'd like to talk about in class. Also, Pamela's parent's reactions to her letters are only contingent upon what Pamela chooses to tell them, which I believe is important.
Getting back to post modernism, I think that Pamela could actually believe her version of events, but that doesn't make them "reality," or the "Truth." Perhaps Mr. B's actually believes his version of "reality," as well. One's perspective IS their reality, so who's to say that one "Truth" is actually real? Regardless, it's not our place, as the audience, to know the "Truth," not that there really is one in a fiction novel. Regardless, for the purposes of the story, I think that Mr. B should be given as much consideration as Pamela in this instance. Perhaps Mr. B is NOT a "bad man," but merely the victim of a "bad woman," Pamela. Who can say? But I would argue that Richardson leaves a few indications that Pamela is a little whimsical in the brain pan (more on that later, don't have the book with me to make page references!!)
OK, this argument will have to remain a little incomplete; this posting is getting fairly long. As I'm writing, more and more ideas are coming to me. Perhaps this is an idea for my final project: post modernism in the 18th century novel? Either way, I'd love to discuss this theory in class Monday, or continue my post later!
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The (fe)male gaze and Pamela
Thus far, we've encountered dozens of apparent contradictions within the texts, contexts, and interpretation of the texts and contexts that we've been reading. Some apparently contradictory situations actually exist simultaneously, and
I'm interested in looking a little more closely at some of them. The germ of this thought actually started in my art history class, (this will seem like I'm going on a tangent, but bear with me) while we were looking at slides of Verrocchio's David. Our professor started discussing the homoerotic overtones of the statue, but this statement makes an implicit assumption that the gaze looking on the statue is male. Obviously, given Marymount's rather unique gender ratio, there were about four guys in a class of about 35 people. So, while definitely making a valid obseration about the qualities of the statue, the professor was implicitly dismissing the female gaze in favor of the implied male gaze. The idea of the "male gaze" has come up repeatedly in examinations of works of art or literature. Basically, it is the assumption that the "gaze" or the consumer of a certain work is male, and this interplay between the work and the maleness of the viewer's gaze raises some interesting questions. So, here we have something of a contradiction between what is assumed and what is real. By this I mean that while traditional examinations of literature are made from a male-oriented point of view, Watt reminds us that most readers of the burgeoning novel (such as Pamela were female. Here we have a work of literature created by a male author with a female protagonist, created for the consumption of a reading public that has a large ratio of female readers, yet at the same time examinations of these works often assume the primacy of the male gaze. This paradox repeats itself when we consider that our class is overwhelmingly female. As a reader, I make a conscious effort not to divorce myself from the work I am investigating. That is, I am conscientious of where I stand as a reader in relation to the text, both in consideration of my historical context and my gendered hermeneutic. I hope I'm not going too out on a limb here, but I am fairly certain that my interpretation of Pamela will be different than a male reader (even one in the same historical and educational context as myself) precisely because of the gendered nature of my interpretation. Obviously I am not attempting to post this as a question of opposing, "right or wrong" intepretations but rather making an observation that I feel is relevant to the contents of this novel. This implies all sorts of interesting developments to the ideas of power, property, sexuality, and male/female discourse as presented within the novel itself.
Before this post turns into me being a complete blowhard, I'm very interested in what my fellow readers think about this idea of the male/female gaze of the reader affecting the interpretation of the novel.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Pamela; a story of letters
In reading Pamela, I must say that I could see the parallels between Richardson's style and the novel that is more familiar to us. When I first opened the book, I expected to be bored and exasperated at having to read a collection of letters. But as I read on, the story seized to be just letters to me, but became an actual story I could appreciate. Richardson used the style of narration he chose to tell this love (for lack of a better term) story very well, at least in my opinion.
The title of the story is very interesting to me in that it introduces the main character and also seems to give us a sneak peak of Pamela's fate. I was not exactly certain of what to make of Mr. B's manner of pursuit of the young Pamela. There were moments when I felt that she did have had reason to fear his advances and found myself empathizing with her, considering her position and apparent vulnerability. At other times, I felt that she might have been simply making mountains out of molehills, which probably came from "listening" to the other characters in the story like Farmer Monkton and Mrs. Jewkes. Beside the fact that I had already learned the manner in which the story would end in class, as I read, I could not help but continually worry and wonder along with Pamela, not quite knowing what to expect the next moment. If indeed she would finally lose her virtue to this powerful man we are taught to call Mr. B., and whether all would be lost so to say. But then I closed the book and read the title again, paying closer attention to it, and I could very well predict Pamela's fate.
I see Richardson's announcing to his readers that Pamela's story would not at all end gravely or heart-wrenchingly as a tact that is also used by modern writers today. He lets us know that the story is about "virtue rewarded" The average modern novel, or at least what most of us readers are familiar with usually has some sort of peak into the future, just usually not with as much precision and/or detail. For instance, the summaries of stories that are typically recorded on back pages of novels to stir up the reader's interest. Personally, I would never purchase a novel if I did not have some sort of idea of what it was about. I think this is the same tactic Richardson used to appeal to readers of his time, which shows an area of similarity between the expectations of his readers and of modern readers today.
Pamela also had a number of the common themes including control via power and affluence, the power of "love" and desire. Mr. B. seemed to me to not only serve as a character but as a representative of those who meet their needs by wielding the iron rod of power and control. However, with as much as I have read, I do not see Mr. B as one who merely chases Pamela to have his way with her, but because he desires her and wants to have her by all means. I see him as being so aware of his position and influence that he will not condescend far enough to speak to her as he would to a woman of class or means. This I got from the letters he wrote to her while she was captive, which seemed apologetic and even almost sincere (at least to my ears).
Summarily, in view of all the other works we have read, I see the most evidence of the modern novel in.
Pamela, or writing in letters
First of all, I'd like to state (for the record) that I enjoyed reading "Pamela." Dr. Howe warned us about the language, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. I did not have to resort to an audiobook to delve into this novel, but I do believe that the experience of using one with Defoe helped in the comprehension of Pamela.
Richardson's technique of writing with letters is very effective for me. I could be biased towards this technique; one of my favorite short stories is Stephen King's "Jerusalem's Lot" in Night Shift. In this semi-preface to the novel "Salem's Lot," King tells his story through letters and diary entries. I struggled with the technique when King used it, and found it very disjointed. However, as I read the short story more, and got used to the style, I respected the technique and came to enjoy it. Richardson, like King, uses personal letters as a way to add subtle nuances and emotion to the story. Like Defoe, Richardson is using a first person narrative, but in a highly stylized way.
With Defoe, even though "Journal" was portrayed as an actual journal/diary, I could never believe in it's authenticity. I know we aren't supposed to read for plot or "lose ourselves" in the work, but I believe that the inability of a reader to believe in it's proclaimed form is a failure of on the part of the author. I enjoyed Defoe (after much complaining!), but I was never able to accept it for it's intended form: an ongoing journal occuring at the time the event actually happened.
Richardson, on the other hand, seems to be more comfortable with his medium. Pamela's letters actually seem to be written by a young, confused girl. Her parents replies, as well, seem to come from concerned parents. The letters clearly shift in tone, leading the reader to clearly differentiate between the "narrators." As a reader of "Pamela," I feel like an outsider looking in, a sort of voyeur. With that voyeuristic feeling, there's a sort of dirty/train wreck feeling, where you can't look away, but you feel that you really should. I didn't get that with Defoe; his style was too journalistic. While both books give the reader an "in" to the narrator's state of mind, Defoe gives you the facts, but Richardson gives you the emotion. I hope that makes sense!
I'm really excited to discuss this work in class, especially the idea of an untrustworthy narrator. I'd love to hear what everyone thinks about the fact that Pamela is writing to her parents, and the idea of different masks we wear. Specifically, is Pamela telling her parents the whole truth? Is there a "truth" that we aren't getting in these letters? Is Pamela trustworth? Why or why not? I bring up a lot of these questions before class mainly because I won't be able to discuss them as well as I'd like to in class. I had mouth surgery on Friday, so please forgive the Jay Leno chin swelling, the lack of clear enunciation, and the fogginess that comes from pain killers...
Also, if anyone knows how to make text bold or in italics using a Mac with Safari as my browser, please let me know!
Friday, February 16, 2007
Richardson's Love and Marriage, go together like-well, you know.
I find I'm more easily able to connect with Richardson's language, which really doesn't come as a surprise to me, as Richardson's novel is certainly closer to what the contemporary reader would expect from a novel. What I'm finding very interesting as I read further into the book are the numerous contradictions that exist within it, which Watt touches on in his essay "Love and Novel."
Firstly, Watt's novel has some historical information about the change in the institution of marriage that I think is fairly essential for the reader to know in order to understand the impact that Pamela had on its readers. (Incidentally, when asked why he hadn't married his companion of several decades and the mother of his children, Gene Simmons of Kiss said that "marriage is a lovely institution, but you have to be crazy to be in an institution.") As Watts points out, the concept of "marriage" as we think of it today-the severing of family ties as the conjugal tie attains primacy-had developed not long before. Watts traces the development of courtly love, or "love" as an activity to while away boredom, into the idea of the modern marital relationship. According to Watt, the development of the concept of romantic love is linked with the shift in perception of the family as an economic unit to the family as a relationship-based unit, which is how we see it today. Under English marriage laws, marriage could either be a way to attain economic stability but paradoxically also a way to destroy it, depending on the economic state of the woman prior to marriage. For the wealthy, marrying meant delivering all of your property to your husband, but for the poor, the state of an unmarried woman was considered deplorable indeed. I think this paradox mirrors a lot of the contradictions in Pamela. For example, is Pamela wielding power over Mr. B? It would seem so-he's going to a lot of trouble on her account, and we all know that she gets him in the end. But Watt reminds the reader that for women actually in Pamela's situation who aren't privileged to be romantic characters, the potential for exploitation is very great indeed. So, we see Mr. B kidnap and imprison Pamela, smear her reputation to her family and neighbors, and terrorize her repeatedly, all actions that would be criminal today. And yet we're supposed to cheer, and Richardson's readers certainly did, when Pamela and Mr. B eventually get hitched. So, I have different and opposite reactions to the novel. The part of me reading it for entertainment certainly thinks its funny, even cute, but the part reading it conscientiously through a postmodern, feminist hermeneutic is appalled.
This is just a sidenote, but has anyone here read any works by China Mieville? He is an English anthropologist and journalist who started writing novels, and I think his writing inherits a lot from Defoe. His trilogy of Iron Council, Perdido Street Station, and The Scar all have that same preoccupation with location that Defoe's Journal does, in which the geography and city becomes almost another character.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Looking back at Defoe through Davis
In reading Davis' discussion of the characteristics of ballads and other printed prose narratives, I was able to more clearly understand Defoe's stylistic choices in writing Journal of a Plague Year.
Through reading Davis' chapters about the origin of the novel, I was able to better understand Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year because it brought to light the historical facts that surrounded the new printed prose narratives and how this novel fit those guidelines. The guidelines themselves are very clearly defined by Davis and gave me an understanding of what the expectations were for a novel when Defoe was writing. Also, I was able to compare the guidelines set forth by Davis against my own notions of the novel and what I would believe to be the expectations our generation would have. Defoe's novel adheres to the popular characteristics of the ballads that Davis describes and since the ballads were so popular, Defoe was able to just expand from a short ballad to an extended story with the same characteristics.
Davis discusses that people were drawn to the journalistic style of the ballads because they gave a sense of recentness to the story which may not have happened recently, or perhaps at all. Defoe's journalistic style keeps us as modern readers however from "getting into" the novel the way we would with a Stephen King or Dean Koontz bestseller.
This also leads one to notice the attention to criminal behavior that Defoe pays, just as Davis describes the ballads as being dominantly about criminal activity. This theme of people being obsessed with deviant, criminal behavior is clearly more timeless than Defoe's journalistic style. While we no longer desire for our novels to give accounts in journalistic fashion, we do tend to be drawn towards the more criminal, risque, and deviant types of novels just as Davis described in his chapters. This voyeuristic quality has proven timeless and continues to bolster istelf in our current media.
Journal of the Plague Year as a journal; as a novel
I must confess that after our class discussion last week that I am still not completely in love with Defoe's style of narration but I do understand and even respect it. I think that in a way, using H.F as a narrator of ordinary status (since we do not even know his full name) is effective, just not in a way that is endearing or enthralling to me as a reader. I also can see the difference in the expectations of a novel- reader of our time and a reader of his time.
In evalutating Defoe in respect to Behn, I see a completely different choice in narrative style. When I read Behn, I felt as if I was reading with my ears plugged securely over my ears to keep the noise of the narrator out so I could digest the story for myself. I felt as if I did not have freedom to make my own conclusions about the story as the narrator belted out her opinions as facts sometimes even before she presented the material she was commenting on. In reading Defoe, it was quite the opposite, I had a narrator who lacked empathy and seemed to tell the story in a monotonous voice. I actually felt like H.F was more of a voice than a possible character in the novel. I felt like he was the voice you hear when you see the large block letters announcing Law and Order:SVU while you never see the owner of the voice, for instance. H.F as we noted in class was an ordinary person. We do not have ample reason to believe that he was of high social class or extravagant means and as readers we never fully get to associate with our narrator as we never even learn his full name. Defoe used H.F as a tool to present his story and that was really what he seemed like to me: a tool.
However, in view and in spite of these differences, I must note that I still enjoyed reading Behn more than I did Defoe. I think this might be because with Behn I felt as if I could almost predict the direction and the end of the story. I saw it almost as soon as I started reading as the story of the tragic hero, the great perfect and hallowed individual who ends up decaying and destroying himself and those around him in the end. It is the same theme I see in Macbeth, in Othello, and several others. Also, the story was the kind that captures attention. I mean as people I think readers always have a tendecy to favor literature that celebrates strengths, like wisdom, comeliness, might, skill in battle etc. So the fact that Behn chose to create characters like Imoinda and Oroonoko in my mind as a reader gave her a boost. Defoe told a story of a dark and gloomy event. One would expect his narrator to be empathetic; to connect with the characters he encountered who were inflicted by the plague. I felt myself expecting him to cry with those who suffered and to write from a personal point of view. That was however, not the case. H.F tells the story like a journalist as has been noted in a former post, disengaging himself emotionally from the happenings of the story. As a reader, I was quite unsure of what to do with that. I mean I found it challenging to follow a story that told of death and dying where the narrator always made sure to wash his hands clean of the certainty of the events by leaving it up to his reader to choose to believe or not to believe some of the things he (the narrator) was told and recorded. Now this is a longshot from Behn.
I can now see what Davis points out as the difference in the expectations of the modern reader as against the expectations of the the reader of Defoe's time. But overall, I think that I still respect Defoe and see why his unique style has remained in publication. I am not in love with his story but I respect his ingenuity.
Defoe's Dry Poetics: The Journalism of Enlightenment Experience
Dr. Howe's comment to Liana's post reminded me of something I've been thinking of since I first read Oroonoko as an undergraduate; our readings of Watt's opening chapters to his Rise of the Novel focus on it, as well. Certainly as modern readers we find ourselves reading to connect - we're all indebted to Freud, among others, for that. I find it a particularly valuable way to read. Yet the revolution of the novel in the 17th & 18th centuries strikes me as one of a very different type.
Defoe's Journal, as well as Oroonoko, owe much of their importance to the ways in which they transformed the historically and realistically unconcerned arts from the Greeks and Romances and such into representations of reality. DeFoe's use of charts of deaths in specific districts strikes us as dry, and even cold, but its inclusion in his account gave a journalistic air of authenticity the readership was not used to. Behn bored me to the point that I stopped reading the book for a week when she began Oroonoko with a lengthy account of the colorful birds she saw. It bored me at first, but it must have thrilled the reading population when they encountered pure sense perception in a "fiction" work (if indeed, they were even considered such at the time). Even the striking titles of these "histories" and "romances" lend a sense that the title page is the only thing that was written with the intent to publish. The title to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, for instance, ends with the simple words, "Written by Himself." It's as if an editor took the pages Crusoe wrote and created a title page for it that would explain the historical document it contained. It's been done since with much success - Nabakov's Pale Fire, The Blair Witch Project, etc. In much the same way that grainy, dark filmstock makes film viewers feel they are in the midst of real events, I imagine 17th and 18th century readers must have reacted to the charts of Defoe's Plague Year. Defoe's concern seems less with emotional resonance and more with sensory curiosity. The rise of the novel coincides with the Enlightenment, and logic was the order of the day (pun very much intended).
I appreciated Watt's explanation of the philosophical foundations for the rise of the novel in philosophical realism and the deeper focus on sense. I am eager to examine Pamela as an epistolary novel, for it seems to be a prime example of the Enlightenment's desire to sift through evidence for itself. It also speaks much to the rising importance the new middle-class must have been feeling about itself. Reading was no longer meant to be entirely didactic or escapist - it encouraged the reader to glean understanding from sensory experience. Also, the focus on character, rather than the theological or philosophical importance of the plot's events (as we saw even in Fantomina), seems to have derived from what Watt explains is the novel's tendency to identify particular times and settings.
Watt expounded on much of what I had been thinking of in his essay, but I hope I contributed a little to the conversation.
Keeping With the Trend: Defoe's Narrator, the Journalist
After reading Lennard Davis' Factual Fictions, I have a better understanding of Defoe's style in A Journal of the Plague Year. Last week, Liana brought up an interesting point regarding Defoe - the narrator is much like a journalist.
Defoe's narrator does not get emotionally involved with the stories he is telling. He simply presents them to the reader and lets him or her decided how to interpret them. Also, he gives detailed reports on the deaths, which is similar to something we would see in today's newspapers (an emphasis on hard facts and details). A Journal is full of anecdotal stories and other little details, which, when taken together, encompass the entire story as a whole. Last week, many of us raised concerns with regard to Defoe's style. His material is dense, hard to absorb, and we were having trouble reading into it. It's hard for us to read A Journal as a "novel" when we consider the other materials we've read as modern readers. It doesn't look like or feel like a "novel". However, Davis has given me a new appreciation for Defoe's style in A Journal. He outlines a history of the "novel," pointing to various origins of the word and what was considered entertainment and prose from the 16th century and beyond. What I found particularly interesting was the idea that novels developed from journalistic pieces, such as criminal histories and the like. If we can see Defoe's narrator as a journalist, I think we can look past the difficulties we are having as 21st century readers and have a much better appreciation for his style. After all, keeping what Davis has presented to us, Defoe's style appealed to the audiences of his time. What may seem boring and dry to the modern reader, was a fascinating page turner for the 18th century reader. I understand now why A Journal is written the way it is. We should keep in mind that Defoe wasn't thinking about his works surviving centuries to come - he was thinking only about his immediate time and what would appeal to his audience. The fact that it has survived to be read by us attests to the greatness of his narrative style.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Defoe and postmodern expectations
Lennard Davis's chapter "Factual Fictions" lends some interesting insights into how a novel like Defoe's could be conceived of, and I think it also lends some clues to our difficulty in connecting with Defoe's narrative.
In our last class, we talked about how our expectations as modern novel readers affects the way we reacted to Defoe's Journal. I will even go so far as to propose that it is the expectations of the audience that, in part, shapes the style of narrative. As a postmodern 21st-century readers, I expect emotional, confessional material within the novel. What I interpret as Defoe's detachment is initally somewhat shocking. I expect H.F. to be more personally affected by the plague, perhaps through a family member's sickness, and to react to the plague much more emotionally than in his rather journalistic style of narration. There seems to be a lack of connection between the narrator and the events he is narrating. Why would I expect this? Because the vast majority of novels created for popular consumption today offer this emotionalism to the reader. It is what I expect, and not finding it in Defoe's work feels initially like being tricked, as though the title and the subject matter had prepared me for a certain type of narration which wasn't delivered.
But perhaps we interpreting Defoe's narrative through an inappropriate paradigm. I make this suggestion after ready what is implicitly expressed in Davis's chapter. Davis makes a connection between the expectations of the audience and the content of the "newes and novels" created for them. The audience craves new, titilating, exciting "newes," hence the controversy surrounding whether or not something was "true" and the efforts that creators of ballads and newes went to to assure their audience of the authenticity of their pieces. Doesn't Defoe do the same thing? Above all, he strives to surround H.F.'s narrative with authenticity and plausibility. Therefore, while Defoe may report the more sensational events that occurred during the plague, we noted in class that he always careful to be skeptical of such events, even though the very presence of H.F.'s skepticism heightens our belief in what he reports.
In other words, it is not Defoe's narrative that is deficient but perhaps that our expectations are different. We turn to novels for entertainment, excitement, or a sort of emotional experience (experienced perhaps by proxy through the narrator), whereas Defoe's audience may have turned to "newes" and novels for a sense of authenticity and continuity, such as Davis mentions in "Factual Fictions."
Monday, February 5, 2007
Ballads and Broadsides
In preparation for our next class on Defoe, when we'll also be reading Davis' chapters from Factual Fictions, please take the time to read over in more detail the plague ballad we examined briefly in class:
"A Recollection of the Times: or, Englands Looking-Glass"
The Davis chapters are available on Blackboard, under course documents/"origins of the novel."
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A lack of empathy in a Journal
Also in agreement with Alana’s post, I cannot connect with Defoe’s writing in the same way as I connected with Behn’s. I chalk this up to writing style: I find his longwinded, clause-filled sentence structure to be distracting. Defoe’s thoughts seem to be all over the place; his narrative is disjointed.
Laura, I also see myself as a romantic reader. I was very excited when I saw this book on the reading list. I hadn’t read it, but I imagined it to be a sort of cross between Stephen King’s The Stand, the Resident Evil game/movie, and Joss Whedon’s Firefly series (regarding the Reavers, for those of you familiar with the plot.) Well, I was mistaken. Journal of the Plague Year, while certainly about an apocalyptic disease, lacks the emotional impact and complexity of the other works I’ve mentioned. (Can you tell I’m addicted to Pop Culture?) This book should have been harrowing and unforgettable, but instead I found it ponderous and difficult to absorb. I found myself reading a few pages, then having to go back and re-read, as nothing had sunken in.
I wonder if the emotional disconnect I feel from Defoe’s work is due to his methodical approach in writing. His style is almost journalistic in nature, except for the constant interjections of personal (dry and cumbersome) thought. Defoe’s voice is distracting, as is his seeming lack of empathy for those suffering around him. The main character seems cold to me; more concerned with possessions and economic goings on than the suffering and death surrounding him. While I applaud Defoe’s desire to chronicle the devastating events of the plague, I think his effort is strangely indifferent to the very thing he is trying to chronicle.
Sorry for the negativity, let me know your thoughts!
Poem: "Journal of the Plague Year"
Ploughshares, Spring 2006 v32 i1 p73(1)
"A Journal of the Plague Year" by Ben Lerner
We would walk with it into the open
Look down and read the shadows
Of the clouds passing over it
The birds sang dial tones
The infected birds
Gray sentences uncurled
As we smoked our manuscripts
The cattle went mad
Their blue lips smiling
At a sign in the distance
We slaughtered the distance
It was not given us
The magic of numbers
We who slept in swaying
Towers underground
Defoe: Novak: Innovator of Fictional form
I must say that I agree with almost everybody else about The Journal of the Plague Year. Defoe was not particularly captivating or engaging to me. However, I did appreciate his sense of accuracy in describing environments, as I felt that I could hear the sounds he heard and feel the things he felt. Yet, at the same time, his obsession with detail frustrated me and almost lost me early in the work.
However, I chose to examine Defoe's work in light of Max Novak's essay "Defoe as an innovator of fictional form." Novak points out that Defoe seems to achieve his purpose of describing the years of the plague in London in a way that was not just purely entertaining and that sucked the gravity of the situation in London at the time out of the story. He postulates that Defoe wrote to adequately portray the city of London in those years of plague. I found this to be particularly true, at least in my opinion. I feel like Defoe used his narrator H. F to show us the city in a way that was descriptive in deep depth as well as plausible and almost realistic. By this I mean that - as Novak points out - Defoe writes about the scene in which certain women raid his brother's warehouse, and amidst the disease and plague indulge themselves in trying on the hats in the room. So, as a reader I felt like this was a brief comic relief, if I might call it that. In essence, while it is apparent that Defoe is using his narrator H. F to tell of the calamities of 1665 London, he does it in a way that provides the reader an expansive view of the events of the Plague including the acts that might be considered too ordinary to attract attention in view of the death and dying taking place. I will say that I was engrossed by Behn's Oroonoko as well as Haywood's Fantomina. Defoe was markedly different to me. This was mainly because he described in too much detail things that I did not particularly care too much about and his story was not of a bright and sunny event. However, I still managed to be able to appreciate his writing style and can see why Novak refers to him as "innovator of fictional form." I see Defoe, at least in relation to the two other authors we have read, as a slight departure from the romantic style, with its fanciful descriptions and common themes to the narration of an event that is ugly and unappealing. I think he performed the task well in that he succeeded in entertaining his readers as well as enlightening them. I think that this might be why Novak sees A Journal of the Plague Year as the first historical fiction. He also tells his story using detail that a reader might not see as useful or just as burdensome, which brings the story closer to everydayness, as numerous events are always taking place around us at any given time, though we might not pay as much attention as Defoe's narrators do to the intrinsic details. His plot also contains some events that I think the story can do without; yet he tells them. I can see how he finds that necessary because life is actually full of such details. In drawing the curtain to a close, I did not really enjoy the reading but I do appreciate Defoe's style.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
The Writing Parallels the Illness
The writing style and plot seemed to parallel the coming and going symptoms of the plague. Not just the physical (body) signs of the illness, but the psychological and geographical signs as well.
The jumping back and forth in time, in setting and internally for H.F. was fascinating and tiresome throughout this reading. However, I can manage to accept that Defoe's intent was well established with his number lists and ever-changing character decision of whether to venture out on the streets of London or stay indoors.
Emotionally speaking, I found this novel to be depressing not because of the death aspect as much as because of the illness aspect: illness of the mind, spirit and population in the face of a bio-threat such as the Plague.
God, can you help me - H.F.'s struggle for survival
I agree with Alana's post in that I am not finding Defoe to be as exciting a read as Behn. That said, I think his writing should be commended by us 21st century readers. After reading the first half of this narrative, I feel as though I've traveled back to London during the time of the plague.
Defoe has painted a vivid picture for me. Although A Journal is fictional and lacking in certain areas, I nonetheless am able to take myself back to the 17th century. As unbelieveable as it may sound to some of you, I see people scurrying to leave town, I hear the cries of those whose family and friends are dying around them. (Perhaps, I am too much of a romantic reader, wanting to get myself lost in each and every book that I read.) As H.F. walks down a London street, noting the drastic changes in scenery, he says: "... the Voice of Mourning was truly heard in the Streets; the shriecks of Women and Children at the Windows, and Doors of their Houses, where their dearest Relations were, perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard" (18). It is phrases such as these that enable me, as a reader, to feel the fear and desperation of the people. This sense of entrapment and fear of never returning to normalcy are what lead me to understand why God appears so frequently throughout A Journal. To answer Alana's question, I do not see A Journal as a testimony to God's mercy. Rather, I see H. F.'s trust in God as an individual reaction to a catastrophic event. I don't believe that he suggested that everyone should trust in God as a means to survive. Instead, he turned to God to help guide him through his decision to stay in London. I'm sure every person dealt with the plague in their own way. After all, his brother preferred to leave town and he was in good company. H.F. chose to stay, for it was "the Will of Heaven" that he not go (12). On the other hand, one could argue that he was forced to stay due to his own fault - he was unable to get a horse and his servant left him before he embarked on the journey. The bottom line is that it is hard for us to correlate God, mercy, and the plague in the same sentence. With so many lives lost, it does make the reader wonder how H. F. survived the epidemic. Was it pure luck or Divine intervention?