Assigned Texts: "The Disappointment" (NA 924-7) & "A Modest Proposal" (NA 1114-9)
The two readings for our first class meeting are selected to provide a brief introduction into some of our course material for Major British Writers. These two texts deal with ideas of the body in different ways and represent approaches through two different genres. Also, we’ll read longer works from both of these authors over the coming weeks, so this will introduce you to them.
These Reading Overviews will be provided for each text assigned in the course and are required reading along with the text(s) for the day. Many of these will include some of the same material in introductions from our course text, summarized to include only the things you need to know for class and supplemented with some outside material that will help guide or start our discussion of the text in class. If you are interested in reading further about a text, an author, or a time period, you can start with our course texts (the Norton Anthology [NA] or the novels). I’ll also provide citations for the supplemental material included if you want to follow up on those.
The Restoration & the Eighteenth Century
As the introduction to this section in the NA (pp. 853-876) notes, this literary period spans the years of 1660 to 1785. Our earliest reading, Behn’s “The Disappointment,” is dated 1680. We’ll be discussing texts from this period for six class sessions, from our first meeting through the following Tuesday. The term “Restoration” refers to the 1660 restoration of Charles II to the English throne. With the return of the monarch, the Church of England was also restored, which led to continued religious tension because monarchs like Charles II and James II supported the Catholic church. This same period saw the return of the arts after Puritans has closed the theatres in the 1640s. Charles II and the much of the court and aristocracy emphasized their freedom to live extravagantly, which led to the culture of the libertine.
The literature of this period is characterized by significant growth and development, beginning with a response to the extravagance of the Renaissance that emphasized simplicity and elegance. Corresponding with the reign of Charles II, the literature, art, and fashion of this period was heavily influenced by French culture. Nature—both human nature and the world outside—was a central theme throughout the period, with different writers and poets using different approaches to it. Many texts also relied heavily on the careful crafting of language through diction, syntax, and a variety of literary strategies as well as on the sharp tuning of wit and satire.
In more than a century of literary work from this period, several genres stand out for their popularity. In the late seventeenth century, with the reopening of the theatres, Restoration drama brought the lives of the upper classes to the stage in “comedies of manners.” As writers continued to craft their prose, satire became increasingly popular both in fiction and in nonfiction. In fiction, the early decades of the eighteenth century also saw novels with famous criminals and with clear moral lessons, while in the middle decades of the century, the sentimental novel became increasingly popular. Finally as the Romanic period approached, the Gothic novel or Gothic romance took center stage. After trends of libertine poetry during the Restoration years and satiric poetry around the turn of the century, much of the poetry during the mid- to late-eighteenth century, focused on the melancholy poet distancing himself from society, turning inward, and often connecting to other periods and places or to nature.
About Aphra Behn & “The Disappointment”
As the NA notes, Aphra Behn is known as the first professional woman writer. That does not mean she was the first woman writer (you can flip through the earlier parts of the NA to see many other women writing centuries before Behn); instead, it means that Behn actually earned living through her writing. Behn lived an exciting life—including time as an English spy abroad and a subsequent stay in debtors’ prison—which has been detailed in several biographies (Janet Todd’s is one of the most popular). In the twentieth century, writers and scholars have reclaimed Behn as a model for women writers and as a foremother for sexual liberation based on the sexually aware women characters in many of her texts and assumptions of her bisexual orientation. Behn wrote in a variety of genres and was a well-known playwright. We will read her short prose novel Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave on Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll include more about that text in tomorrow’s Reading Overview.
The subject of Behn’s “The Disappointment” would be considered somewhat racy in our current time, and it was shocking for her seventeenth-century readers as well. The diction, syntax, and the poetic form may make “The Disappointment” difficult on a first reading, so we’ll read the poem aloud in class and summarize stanza by stanza. This reading strategy can be useful for any text, poem or otherwise, that is difficult on first reading. Before one can perform deeper analysis on a text, (s)he must understand what the poem is about. If you’re struggling with a text at any point in the semester, I suggest you return to this strategy, but please remember that it is only a beginning to the reading process and analysis goes beyond basic plot summary.
In connection with our course topic of the body, “The Disappointment” is a key text for discussing the sexual(ized) body. Indeed, it is the sexual desire/satisfaction of a female character that would have made the poem particularly racy or shocking for its contemporary readers. Other texts in this tradition focus on the sexual encounters of male figures, whether they are satisfying or failures. As the footnote on page 924 notes, Behn’s poem differs from others in the tradition by including the thoughts and feelings of the woman with those of the man.
About Jonathan Swift & “A Modest Proposal”
Jonathan Swift, though an excellent writer, was by profession a clergyman in the Anglican Church. Though born to English parents, Swift lived much of his life in Ireland and fought for Irish rights against English oppression. His religious work closely tied with political activism and writing, for as you will remember from any US history course, there was no concept of a separation between church and state in England. Swift’s writing is most clearly characterized by his satire and his polished prose. Both of the texts we’ll read by Swift are satiric prose, first is an essay titled “A Modest Proposal” for our first class meeting and second is the novel Gulliver’s Travels, of which we’ll read Part I on Friday and Monday.
In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams defines satire “as the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation….[Satire] uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt that exists outside the work itself. The butt may be an individual..., or a type of person, a class, an institution, a nation, or even…the entire human race” (320). It is important to note that satire may not necessarily make you laugh; in fact, you may find some satire offensive. For example, think about the satire of Stephen Colbert or The Onion online newspaper. For our discussion in class, think about other present-day examples of satire.
Now to our first reading by Swift, “A Modest Proposal,” an essay Swift published anonymously in 1729. As the footnote on page 1114 explains, this is a particularly effective example of satire, in which Swift employs both irony and parody. Like Stephen Colbert, Swift’s narrator represents an illogical and fanatic position, though his crafted prose makes the reader follow his logic without question for at least part of the essay before realizing just what the narrator is proposing.
