Here were the top three choices for the novel we'll read at the end of the semester, from the handouts completed in class on Friday.
___Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
The first Gothic novel, set in a haunted castle in medieval Europe. When it appeared nobody had ever read anything quite like it, and it was a huge hit.
___John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749)
a.k.a., “Fanny Hill”— hardcore C18 pornography, but not without redeeming literary merit and considerable historical/cultural interest.
___Anonymous [Unca Eliza Winkfield], The Female American (1767)
Total outlier—largely unknown since its initial publication until it got resurrected in 2001. A variation on Robinson Crusoe, it’s the story of a young woman (half native American and half English) who gets stranded on a desert island. Includes pirates, missionaries, and a hermit (who helpfully leaves behind a survival manual so that our heroine doesn’t starve to death).
The responses to the handout identified four relevant considerations, though there was disagreement about which of these should be most important. Below each consideration I spell out how it best applies to these three novels.
1. Most canonical
Of these three choices, The Castle of Otranto has been the most enduring (although Memoirs of a Woman of Pleaure has a unique place in the annals of English-language pornography).
2. Most popular at the time it was written:
Again, The Castle of Otranto.
3. Most entertaining
Difficult to say! I first read Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in a college course on C18 fiction (approx. 400 pages of reading/week) in which the professor said he put it on the syllabus to make sure there was at least one novel everyone read to the end. On the other hand, once you get over the initial thrill of “OMG, I’m reading this for CREDIT?!?” the graphic depictions of sex are, well…graphic depictions of sex. There’s not a whole lot of plot (girl meets brothel, girl meets boy, girl gets separated from boy but life in and around the brothel keeps her busy, girl reunites with boy and lives happily ever after). The Female American remains resolutely chaste (at least, until she rather reluctantly decides to marry her cousin-the-vicar, the better to convert the heathen), but this novel, like Otranto, has a number of bizarre and fascinating twists and turns.
4. Most characteristic of its time
Although The Female American has been largely forgotten, it shares many traits in common with vast quantities of the fiction that was written and read at the time. Like many, many other “forgotten” novels from the later eighteenth century, it has a female author, an engagement with various kinds of exotic “others,” a first person narrative that claims to be “found,” a plot that traverses the Atlantic, and a concern with the female protagonist’s virtue and agency.
We will vote in class on Monday, but feel free to reflect here on the reasons for choosing one of these novels over the others. Which would contribute most meaningfully to the content of this course and your understanding of later eighteenth-century literature?
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8 comments:
I must say, in my experience, although literature is important to study as a way of understanding the people of the past in order to better understand ourselves, if a piece of literature is not entertaining--or at least engaging, it is simply not worth reading.
I have also found, however, that a piece of literature is made to be more entertaining or engaging when its backstory itself is highly entertaining or engaging. For instance, Aligieri's "Inferno" tends to drag on and on at times (not that it didn't have really cool parts in it, too), but what made it entertaining for me was the thought that it was just his way of seeking revenge on his exilers. And what better revenge than putting someone in hell?
So I would say "entertaining" is the most important of these things--it certainly will spark more interesting class discussions--but I don't necessarily say it strictly in reference to plot, but will make allowances for interesting back-stories or historical context.
That said, I don't know which of these books best fits this category, since I've read none of them and know nothing of their historical context or how they came to be written. I still think The Castle of Otranto looks the most promising, since it applies to two of the categories listed and sounds utterly ridiculous in plot, which I prefer.
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, I'm not going to lie, is quite intriguing, but I could see how it would get to be highly repetitive. But at least it would be repetitively entertaining.
As of now, however, my vote is for The Castle of Otranto.
I am also most interested in reading Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. To begin with, we haven't read anything very "gothic" so far this semester and I have always been drawn to that genre. Also,I would like to read it since "nobody had ever read anything quite like it" at the time. I am interested to learn how it was different from more conventional literature. Also, as ckurjan2 points out, entertaining literature draws in the most readers and I think that ghost stories are typically a fun read.
I agree with ckurjan and Elise, I think that the castle Otranto is the best book to read for the course. I think that the fact that it is the first Gothic novel to debut in England will make it very interesting because we'll get a chance to see what made this genre different from all the others. Also I think that the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure would not be as engaging because our society is already so saturated with sex that it wouldn't be anything new, it would just be sex in an 18c context. Whereas the Castle of Otranto will raise a lot of questions, why was there a need to create this whole new genre? What attracted people to it versus the moralistic writings of Johnson and others? I also agree that it is important for a story to be entertaining so that the reader is engaged. I must admit that my worry with the Traveler story of the American woman is that her depiction of the 'other' will be inherently racist. It also sounds a bit confusing because of all the back story and different characters. Castle of Otranto sounds fun and also a bit dark and I think it would be interesting to explore why the British public was so engaged.
We started off this semester looking for texts that were deemed 'survivors,' and our list was pretty small. It's hard to talk to other English majors about the texts we've read because they're somewhat obscure.
Let's read OTRANTO since it's the most enduring of the three. Professors use it a lot to introduce gothic literature. Plus, many English majors know about gothicism and it makes for a conversation starter.
At the peril of sounding like a "Me Too", I'll get behind Otranto. It's come up in 2 other classes, and even in this class it's come up in some of the modern readings about C18 lit. I think it would be a valuable chance to understand why it is a "survivor," which would in turn help further define the features of C18 literature.
Also, I'd like to see what kind of precedents it sets that future "gothic" works chose to mimic or use for their desired effect.
I listed "The Castle of Otranto" as my first choice as well. I agree with Elise about being drawn to Gothic novels. Being one of the first of its kind, I am also interested to see how the novel conforms with our pre-existing (English major) ideas of Gothic. Usually founding texts are not quite as polished.
Well, to keep the trend going, I also put Walpole's The Castle of Otranto as my first choice on Friday. The gothic has always interested me and to read the prototypical gothic would be worthwhile to me and it would grant us further insight into the developing styles found in the late C18. We know that romanticism and enlightenment thinking both frame the time, but where does the gothic fit in? I think this discussion and others would be fueled by the reading of Walpole's novel. Plus, a majority of students seem to be very interested in the work. This in mind, however, I think that reading a novel outside of our spectrum of interest might open up a new door to discussions we have yet to touch on so I think that a significant outlier would be a good read too.
I was hoping not to jump on the proverbial bandwagon here but I also think Otranto would be the best read. I was originally curious about Cleland's, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, simply because I wanted to see what the similarities and differences were in regards to sexuality in the C18 and modern day. I'm sure it would be interesting to tap into that subject but I don't think that interest merits choosing the novel.
The main reason I feel The Castle of Otranto would be the best choice is the fact that it was the first Gothic novel. I know this point has already been talked about but; 1. we haven't really read any Gothic this semester, and 2. I would like to see how influential this book was to the Gothic movement. I think it would show a lot of themes, content and storylines that we are used to seeing from the genre as it matured.
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