now and then

NOW AND THEN

A Modular Approach To EnglishNovel:Daniel DefoeJ. SwiftH. FieldingLawrence Sterne

NOVEL

ITS SOURCES•Rise of newspapers which rapidly spread out all over England. •A deep interest in political matters arisen from the victorious Revolution of 1688 •The lack of censorship after 1694•The rise of the reading public due to the increased standards of living, •Journalists were novelists

NOVELDEFINITIONThe novel deriving from the Latin word ‘novus’, new and from the Italian ‘novella’, was not only original as a new literary genre, but also reported about recent events, asnewspapers did.FEATURES•The presence of a story, the plot, a few characters, •A skilful handling of time and space, •Peculiar communicative qualities •The celebration of bourgeois common-sense values.

NOVELStory: what the writer knows, the mere chronologicalsequence of events.Plot: what the writer tells the reader, the sequence ofevents and actions as presented by the writerPLOTS are based on Psychological or moral growth of 1 characterSocial or political issuesJourney, whether realistic or fantasticThe development of personal relationships

NOVEL

Not only the plain, factual denotative style of newspapers influenced the English novel, but also the ethics standing behind it. •The merchants’ profit-making logics, •The adventurous colonizing spirit, •The strict Puritan moral code •The self-reliance of middle classes

ROBINSON CRUSOE

•The plot is taken from a newspaper, it is derived from a fact, really happened to John Silkirk •The author developed his story around this nucleus.•There is the continuous interpolation of an omniscient narrator who recalls the past, makes digressions, comments and judges, a suitable device to keep the reader’s attention high as well as maintaining a conversational gossiping tone. •The narrator reveals a profound interest in concrete matters,

ROBINSON CRUSOE

in food and sleep, but even in the exploitation of the island sources. •He is not interested in the wild beauty of the desert island, but only in building up the same comforts, he had previously at home. •The way Robinson lives on the island is a suitable springboard to a full understanding of an 18thC middle class man’s attitude towards money, religion, funds, economy and law.

ROBINSON CRUSOE

•Even 18thC newspapers offer an acute perspective of the English society with its thirst for power, fame, success, with its devotional religious spirit, with its contract-makingeconomy and with its strict sense of justice and order. •The language itself employed by the author witnesses the influence of journalism, it meets the new reader’s taste. •Archaisms are abandoned, adjectives are reduced, •Strong emphasis is given to descriptive verbs •Abstractions are disappearing.

ROBINSON CRUSOE

•In spite of the simplicity of language, colloquialism is avoided and a certain awareness of language dignity is saved. FAILURES• the lack of characterization and that of structure, •.Robinson does not develop during the novel, but he saves his creed, his prejudices in spite of the external events.

ROBINSON CRUSOE

•The novel does not present a whole story, but almost a sequence of events, sketches in which the hero or better, the anti-hero is involved. •Defoe seems to recall the picaresque tradition of Cervantes or the isolated adventures reported in some newspapers’ pages.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

•Relationship between journalism and fiction. •The Anglo-Irish writer satirized the realistic novel and travel-book tradition creating a work which could hardly be included in a given literary genre. •Only apparently all the literary conventions of the time are respected such as: •true characters •a realistic story •time and space categories well arranged.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

•It is the account of four travels to imaginary lands, led by Immanuel Gulliver, a ship surgeon. •The presence of the narrator adds a certain authenticity to the story as well as being a suitable device to communicate with the reader.•A strong awareness of the workings of writing can be seen in the large presented collection of forms of writing: •documents, •shouts, •lists as well as a rich portrayal of various micro languages.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

•The trend shows how the 18thC English reader was accustomed to newspapers, wanted to be informed as well as entertained. •In a certain sense, Gulliver embodies the common reader who could be easily entangled with the obscure mechanism of words. •As its name itself suggests, he becomes a victim of words, of prejudices, his vision of the world is short-sighted. Only at the end of the book, he experiences how his perspective was limited.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

• On these grounds, it can be defined an anatomy, that is an interrogative spirit working to find out the basic ethic political principles governing man after a careful analysis in all the variety of the human race. •In a certain way, even newspapers are an anatomy since they explore our human universe to grasp what lies behind. •They do not give an exhaustive vision of reality but hint at attracting the reader, at reflecting upon what is happening around him.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

•Swift does not offer a response but provokes a dispute without solving it. •He tries to shake the hypocrisy of his own society by condemning euphemism and highlighting the troublesomerelation between things and words. •He employs a suitable but powerful tool, satire, used by journalists to render vividly their reports. Satire is when the first meaning collides with secondary onesprovoking laughter; it is skilfully handled through the use of understatements and a peculiar taste for paradox

HENRY FIELDING

•He described comic situations in an epic structure•Cervantes’ Don Quixote as his model•He presents a well knit combination of episodes, structuredand organized in an organic unity•The setting is made up of streets, highways and various itineraries•There is a large range of characters to give rise to the comic•There is no individualization in the portrayal of characters

HENRY FIELDING

•All the novels offer a realistic picture of the 18thC society•There is no idea of Puritan punishment•Anyway there is a lurking moral message: men tendnaturally towards goodness; he wants them to understand that virtue is better than vice and laughtercan be used to defeat immorality•There are no strong sentimentalistic events•Social denunciation is carried out indirectly

HENRY FIELDING

•Irony is always broad and witty•He did not believe in the usefulness of all-good orall-bad chararacters, because no such people really exist in life. So he creates people sometimes contradictory in their mixture of vice and virtue, but as adherent as possible to reality and endowed with human nature•A great attention he paid to lower rank characters, notbecause of egalitarian principles, he did not believe in, butbecause of his deep interest in all human beings

LAWRENCE STERNE

•The creator of the anti-novel •Disorder as his narrative principle•He broke all logical links between episodes•He interrupted the progression of events with digresssions•He produced unpredictable characters•He introduced non-communicating dialogues

The l ife and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

•The sequence of absurd incoherent incidents in 1st person narrator•Picaresque form•The prevailing sense of chance that dominates the work •The mock-heroic treatment of some subjects•The conventional biographical form presented by the title•He used the association of ideas

The l ife and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

•He produced a new sense of time ruled by individual consciousness•What is important is the emotional impact of facts•Attention to idiosyncracies, obsesssions, passions•Presence of an inexplicable inner drive•The active participation of the reader is required•He anticipates Freudian theories about pre and post natal events