Prose Satire and the Novel: Satirical Novels by Five British Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Su, Jing-fen
Abstract
This dissertation examines the satirical novels by five British women writers in the long eighteenth century, including The New Atalantis (1709) by Delarivier Manley (1672-1724), The Reform''d Coquet (1724) by Mary Davys (1674-1727), The Female Quixote (1752) by Charlotte Lennox (c. 1729-1804), Evelina (1778) by Frances Burney (1752-1840), and Nature and Art (1796) by Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821). I argue that the satirical novels by women writers in this period demonstrate women’s active participation in the satiric tradition, which is generally regarded as dominated by male practitioners and critics. As my study shows, with the immensely expanding market of novel publications joined by both male and female novelists from prominent writers to Grub Street hacks, the development of the new genre of the novel combines forces from multiple lines: Menippean satire in prose, formal verse satire, French romance, Spanish novella, women’s amatory fiction, epistolary fiction, scandalous novels, didactic novels, conduct literature, Restoration comedy, traveler’s tale, picaresque narrative, and the like. Moreover, the women writers of satirical novels not just learn from classical models of Roman satirists such as Horace and Juvenal, or from their contemporary male colleagues such as Jonathan Swift and Henry Fielding, but also make their own distinctive contribution to both the satiric and novelistic traditions by experimenting with and innovating satiric narrative strategies in their novels.
My investigation of these women''s satirical works further reveals that there existed a gradual shift from Manley’s blatant political satire, through the comic presentations of reformed coquettes with their exotic/fantastic adventures in Davys, Lennox and Burney, to the final abandonment of the satiric mode for the sentimental one by Inchbald in the middle of her novel. Having been absorbed into the novel, the sharpness of satire in the later women novelists was softened to be mild and harmless, and toward the end of the century satire as a genre eventually fell from its earlier prominent status, as evidenced by Inchbald''s symbolic gesture in composing Nature and Art.
Subjects
Menippean satire
parody
the rise of the novel
eighteenth-century women novelists
sentimental novel
Type
thesis
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