enter the novel: american fiction in the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth centuries

1. Enter the Novel: American Fiction in the Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth Centuries English 516 Dr. Roggenkamp Image: A Young Girl Reading, Jean Honoré Fragonard, 1796

3. “Novel reading today, licentious riot and senseless revolution tomorrow” (Cathy Davidson, Revolution and the Word) “I have heard it said in favour of novels that there are many good sentiments dispersed in them. I maintain, that good sentiments being found scattered in loose novels, render them the more dangerous, since, when they are mixed with seducing arguments, it requires more discernment . . . And when a young lady finds principles of religion and virtue inculcated in a book, she is naturally thrown off her guard by taking it for granted that such a work can contain no harm: and of course the evil steals imperceptibly into her heart.” -- Weekly Magazine, 1798

4. “Novel Reading, a Cause of Female Depravity” (1802 jeremiad) “The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. . . . Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind . . . . How many thousands have, by a free use of such books, corrupted their principles, inflamed their imagination, and vitiated their taste . . . .” -- Reverend Enos Hitchcock, 1790

5. Why all the fuss? Puritanical roots of New England publishing Fear of changing conditions in terms of gender, society, economic class, politics Rise of a middle- to lower-class readership: novel a genre “deliberately aimed not at the gentry but at Americans who often did not read other kinds of books” (Davidson) Replace authority of intellectual elite—and authority of the sermon Female readers who lack male guidance A cultural revolution seen in growth of novel

6. Changes in the business of shaping the literary landscape Novel “invented” (arguably) in mid 18th century, Europe First English novel (perhaps): Samuel Richardson’s Pamela Before then: “novelistic” stuff in crime stories, chapbooks, ballads, newspapers—also captivity narratives, execution sermons, etc. Novel—nouvelle—what’s new, meaning a new genre, but also what’s new in society—narrative about contemporary concerns

7. Novels in America Americans DID read novels, though they were so universally frowned upon by cultural critics Imports, almost exclusively, until 19th century A TRANSATLANTIC reading culture Piracy: no federal copyright law until 1790; no firm international copyright law until 1890 First novel published by American: The Power of Sympathy, William Hill Brown (1789) Charles Brockden Brown America’s first really “serious” novelist

8. Early Novel Sub-Genres Picaresque: novel of epic (or mock epic) scale; gallery of character types, including lower-class protagonist who survives by guile or trickery; parody of chivalric romance (The Algerine Captive, 1797; Candide, 1759) Sentimental novel or novel of sensibility: novel of manners, of women in more cultured settings—often involving seduction plot (and often epistolary in nature) (Jane Austen’s works; Charlotte Temple, 1790; The Coquette, 1797; The Power of Sympathy, 1789) Image: Engraving from 1778 edition of Voltaire’s Candide

9. Types of Novels in Early America Gothic: Supernatural (or apparently supernatural) tale, often featuring mad monks, castles, ancestral halls, ruined abbeys, innocent maiden held captive by evil male, ghosts and spirits, etc. (Ann Radcliffe novels; The Castle of Otronto, 1764, Northanger Abbey, c. 1790s) Image: engraving from Radcliffe’s Sicilian Romance (1790)

10. Good Introductory Resources Davidson, Cathy. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Brown, Richard D. Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. Zboray, Ronald. A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1986.