The Practice of Satire in England, 1650-1770
Open Access
- Author:
- Marshall, Ashley Marie
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 27, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Robert Hume, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Robert Hume, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Thomas Harwood, Committee Member
Laura Lunger Knoppers, Committee Member
John Philip Jenkins, Committee Member
Thomas Lockwood, Committee Member
Howard D Weinbrot, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Defoe
Pope
Swift
Dryden
literary history
satyr
satire
Fielding
satire theory - Abstract:
- This dissertation attempts to answer a central question: how was satire conceived and understood by writers and readers from 1650 to 1770? Much has been written about eighteenth-century satire, but scholars have focused almost exclusively on a very small number of canonical works (e.g., Absalom and Achitophel, Gulliver’s Travels, The Dunciad). They have also looked for continuity over time or have jumped casually from 1681 to 1704 to 1743 with little attention to the importance of chronology. This study is based on reading some 3,000 works, in all genres and all years, from one-page squibs to novels. Chapter 1 offers a quantitative and conceptual analysis of the canon as presented in the books of twelve major predecessors. It also analyzes the prices charged for some 250 satires, considers the problem of definition of “satire,” and offers a rationale for a taxonomic approach. Chapter 2 is devoted to a survey of contemporary commentary—what eighteenth-century critics and practitioners of satire had to say about it. Contrary to the conclusions drawn by P. K. Elkin in The Augustan Defence of Satire (1973), I demonstrate that eighteenth-century attitudes toward satire are not neat and consistent. Chapters 3 through 7 offer a detailed taxonomic analysis of satire as it was written in five significantly different sub-periods. Chapter 3 deals with “Satire in the Carolean Period”; chapter 4 with “Satire at the End of the Seventeenth Century; chapter 5 with “Swift, Defoe, and the New Varieties of Satire, 1700-1725”; chapter 6 with “Harsh and Sympathetic Satire, 1725-1745”; chapter 7 with “Churchill, Foote, Macklin, Garrick, Smollett, Sterne, and Others: 1745-1770.” A brief Epilogue analyzes a spectrum of motives for writing satire. English satire from 1650 to 1770 is messy, confused, and discontinuous; it comprises a staggering amount of disparate material; and it comes in all shapes and sizes. Satiric practice changes radically and rapidly (from decade to decade, sometimes more quickly) across this period. Reading everything, and paying attention to the particular contexts from which satires spring, dramatically changes how we understand satire in its great age.