From Fiction to the Novel

Geoffrey Day

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000032413
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire

Originally published in 1987, this title is a comprehensive study focused on experimental forms in eighteenth-century fiction. It suggests that the eighteenth-century novel is misread because it is judged with the templates of nineteenth and twentieth century versions of 'the novel' in mind, rather than as a standalone genre. Looking at works from well-known authors of the time this learned and lively book, gently but precisely undermines a basic category of modern literary understanding.

CHAPTER 1

‘A SMALL TALE, GENERALLY OF LOVE’

Johnson, Dictionary (1755), s.v. Novel

THE title page of Congreve’s Incognita (1692) is almost aggressively insistent in its assertion of the work’s nature: Incognita: or, Love and Duty Reconciled. A Novel. Justification for this appellation is provided in the preface in which Congreve carefully distinguished between the ideas of ‘novel’ and ‘romance’:

Romances are generally composed of the constant Loves and invincible Courages of Hero’s, Heroins, Kings and Queens, Mortals of the first Rank, and so forth; where lofty Language, miraculous Contingencies and impossible Performances, elevate and surprize the Reader into a giddy Delight, which leaves him flat upon the Ground whenever he gives of[f], and vexes him to think how he has suffer’d himself to be pleased and transported, concern’d and afflicted at the several Passages which he has Read, viz. these Knights Success to their Damosels Misfortunes, and such like, when he is forced to be very well convinced that ’tis all a lye. Novels are of a more familiar nature; Come near us, and represent to us Intrigues in practice, delight us with Accidents and odd Events, but not such as are wholly unusual or unpresidented, such which not being so distant from our Belief bring also the pleasure nearer us. Romances give more of Wonder, Novels more Delight. And with reverence be it spoken, and the Parallel kept at due distance, there is something of equality in the Proportion which they bear in reference to one another, with that between Comedy and Tragedy ….¹

This neat distinction appears to have been accepted in certain areas throughout the subsequent century. Thus in the preface to the second edition of The Castle of Otranto (1765) Horace Walpole declared that he had been attempting to combine what he clearly saw as two essentially different types of literary production:

It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life.²

That by ‘the two kinds of romance’ Walpole meant ‘romance’ and ‘novel’ may be deduced from the letter sent to Joseph Warton together with a presentation copy of the book:

In fact, it is but partially an imitation of ancient romances; being rather intended for an attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels. This was in great measure the plan of a work, which, to say the truth, was begun without any plan at all.³

It is hardly surprising that Clara Reeve in her prefatory remarks to The Old English Baron (1778), while acknowledging her debt to Walpole’s work, repeated his distinction:

As this Story is of a species which, tho’ not new, is out of the common track, it has been thought necessary to point out some circumstances to the reader, which will elucidate the design, and, it is hoped, will induce him to form a favourable, as well as a right judgment of the work before him.

This Story is the literary offspring of the Castle of Otranto, written upon the same plan, with a design to unite the most attractive and interesting circumstances of the ancient Romance and modern Novel … to attain this end, there is required a sufficient degree of the marvellous, to excite the attention; enough of the manners of real life, to give an air of probability to the work; and enough of the pathetic, to engage the heart in its behalf.⁴

What is rather more interesting about this opening is the contention that in order to have a ‘right judgment of the work before him’ the reader needs to be able to appreciate the design. A work which combines the elements of novel and romance must be judged and criticised in that light; and by extension novels are to be judged as novels, and romances as romances. This basic assumption is what makes Congreve’s distinction so vital.

But not all critics accepted that these two words denominated such clearly distinct ideas. In 1787 George Canning, at that date still a seventeen-year-old at Eton, wrote an entertaining piece for his own periodical, The Microcosm, in which he explored with some perception both the distinguishing features and the similarities of the two forms:

NOVEL-WRITING has by some late authors been aptly enough styled the young sister of ROMANCE. A family likeness is indeed very evident; and in their leading features, though in the one on a more enlarged, and in the other on a more contracted scale, a strong resemblance is easily discoverable between them.

An eminent characteristic of each is Fiction; a quality which they possess, however, in very different degrees. The Fiction of ROMANCE is restricted by no fetters of reason, or of truth; but gives a loose to lawless imagination, and transgresses at will the bounds of time and place, of nature and possibility. The Fiction of the other, on the contrary, is shackled with a thousand restraints; is checked in her most rapid progress by the barriers of reason; and bounded in her most excursive flights by the limits of probability.

To drop our metaphors: we shall not indeed find in NOVELS, as in ROMANCES, the hero sighing respectfully at the feet of his mistress, during a ten years’ courtship in a wilderness; nor shall we be entertained with the history of such a tour, as that of Saint George; who mounts his horse one morning in Cappadocia, takes his way through Mesopotamia, then turns to the right into Illyria, and so by way of Grecia and Thracia, arrives in the afternoon in England. To such glorious violations as these of time and place, ROMANCE writers have an exclusive claim. NOVELISTS usually find it more convenient to change the scene of courtship from a desert to a drawing-room; and far from thinking it necessary to lay a ten years’ siege to the affections of their heroine, they contrive to carry their point in an hour or two; as well for the sake of enhancing the character of their hero, as for establishing their favourite maxim of love at first sight; and their Hero, who seldom extends his travels beyond the turnpike-road, is commonly content to chuse the safer, though less expeditious, conveyance of a post-chaise, in preference to such a horse as that of Saint George.

But, these peculiarities of absurdity alone excepted, we shall find that the NOVEL is but a more modern modification of the same ingredients which constitute the ROMANCE; and that a recipe for the one may be equally serviceable for the composition of the other.

A ROMANCE (generally speaking) consists of a number of strange events, with a Hero in the middle of them; who, being an adventurous Knight, wades through them to one grand design, namely, the emancipation of some captive Princess, from the oppression of a merciless Giant; for the accomplishment of which purpose he must set at nought the incantations of the caitiff magician; must scale the ramparts of his castle; and baffle the vigilance of the female dragon, to whose custody his Heroine is committed.

Foreign as they may at first sight seem from the purposes of a NOVEL, we shall find, upon a little examination, that these are in fact the very circumstances upon which the generality of them are built; modernized indeed in some degree, by the transformations of merciless Giants into austere Guardians, and of she-dragons into Maiden Aunts. We must be contented also that the heroine, though retaining her tenderness, be divested of her royalty; and in the Hero we must give up the Knight-errant for the accomplished Fine Gentleman.

Still, however, though the performers are changed, the characters themselves remain nearly the same. In the Guardian we trace all the qualities which distinguish his ferocious predecessor; substituting only, in the room of magical incantations, a little plain cursing and swearing; and the Maiden Aunt retains all the prying vigilance, and suspicious malignity, in short, every endowment but the claws, which characterize her romantic counterpart. The Hero of a NOVEL has not indeed any opportunity of displaying his courage in the scaling of a rampart, or his generosity in the deliverance of enthralled multitudes; but as it is necessary that a Hero should signalize himself by both these qualifications, it is usual, to manifest the one by climbing the garden wall, or leaping the park-paling, in defiance of ‘steel-traps and spring-guns;’ and the other, by flinging a crown to each of the post-boys, on alighting from his chaise and four.

In the article of interviews, the two species of composition are pretty much on an equality; provided only, that they are supplied with a ‘quantum sufficit’ of moonlight, which is indispensably requisite; it being the etiquette for the Moon to appear particularly conscious on these occasions. For the adorer, when permitted to pay his vows at the shrine of his Divinity, custom has established in both cases a pretty universal form of prayer.

Thus far the writers of NOVEL and ROMANCE seem to be on a very equal footing; to enjoy similar advantages, and to merit equal admiration. We are now come to a very material point, in which ROMANCE has but slender claims to comparative excellence; I mean the choice of names and titles. However lofty and sonorous the names of Amadis and Orlando; however tender and delicate may be those of Zorayda and Roxana, are they to be compared with the attractive alliteration, the seducing softness, of Lydia Lovemore, and Sir Harry Harlowe; of Frederic Freelove, and Clarissa Clearstarch? Or can the simple “Don Belianis, of Greece,” or the “Seven Champions of Christendom”, trick out so enticing a title-page, and awaken such pleasing expectations, as the “Innocent Adultery,” the “Tears of Sensibility,” or the “Amours of the Count de D*****, and L—y——?”⁵

Though there is an element of extravagance in his expression it is evident that Canning agrees with Congreve’s basic distinction: that ‘novels’ tend to reflect those areas of life with which the reader is conversant; ‘romances’ engage in wilder flights of fancy. That Congreve’s notion of the difference was still accepted a century later may be seen from the review of Fanny Burney’s Camilla which appeared in The British Critic for November 1796:

To the old romance, which exhibited exalted personages, and displayed their sentiments in improbable or impossible situations, has succeeded the more reasonable, modern novel; which delineates characters drawn from actual observation, and, when ably executed, presents an accurate and captivating view of real life.⁶

Throughout the eighteenth century ‘romance’ was seen by some as a term suggesting excessive flights of fancy. This may be seen from the colloquial observations of Steele in The Spectator: ‘if I do not succeed it shall look like Romance …’ and ‘It would look like Romance to tell you …’⁷ and from Sterne’s comment in Tristram Shandy: ‘this plea, tho’ it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book, from this very moment, a profess’d ROMANCE, which, before, was a book apocryphal.’⁸

So there is evidence over a long period that the words ‘novel’ and ‘romance’ had clearly perceived and separate ideas attached to them. And such sensible distinctions would certainly allow the readers and critics both of the eighteenth century and of the twentieth to generate informed critical opinions: Clara Reeve’s ‘right judgment of the work’.

Unfortunately, though there is a tradition of clarity of definition, there is vastly more evidence to show that those works now commonly referred to as ‘eighteenth century novels’ were not perceived as such by the readers or indeed by the major writers of the period, and that, so far from being ready to accept the various works as ‘novels’, they do not appear to have arrived at a consensus that works such as Robinson Crusoe, Pamela, Joseph Andrews, Clarissa, Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle and Tristram Shandy were even all of the same species.

Some of the confusion was generated by careless use of what, in the best of all possible worlds, could have been employed as key terms. The words ‘novel’ and ‘romance’ appear to have acted as if unlike poles of two magnets: the one immediately attracted the other. This verbal tic manifested itself throughout the century. Steele in The Spectator wrote, ‘But, Child, I am afraid thy Braines are a little disordered with Romances and Novels’ (Bond, vol. 2, p. 487); Defoe opened Moll Flanders with the remark, ‘The world is so taken up of late with Novels and Romances, that it will be hard for a private History to be taken for Genuine …’,⁹ thus further confusing the issue by introducing a new term, ‘history’, as if it were something distinct. That not all agreed it was a distinct idea is seen from Walpole’s letter to Dr Henry: ‘I have often said that History in general is a Romance that is believed, and that Romance is a History that is not believed; and that I do not see much other difference between them’ (Letters, vol. 15, p. 173). Though perhaps flippantly making ‘romance’ and ‘history’ synonymous, it has been seen from the letter to Warton that Walpole did distinguish ‘romance’ and ‘novel’ even if his correspondents did not: Conway is typical of those who paired the words indiscriminately, writing, ‘I remember you buried in romances and novels’ (Letters, v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 ‘A small tale, generally of love’
• Chapter 2 ‘On Fable and Romance’
• Chapter 3 Amelia’s nose: perceptions of reality
• Chapter 4 ‘Romances, Chocolate, Novels, and the like Inflamers’
• Chapter 5 Motley emblems and much wanted standards
• Chapter 6 ‘The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together’
• Notes
• Index