Joseph Andrews.

309 Pages·1998·15.1 MB·English

CLASSICAL AND GROTESQUE BODIES:
SOME ASPECTS OF COURTESY LITERATURB AND
TBE MID-EI--cENTURY COMIC NOVEL
Tim J. Prior
A thesis submitted in conformity w i t h the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of English
University of Toronto
Copyright by Tim J. Prior 1997
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CLASSICAL AND GROTESQUE BODIES: SOME ASPECTS OF COURTESY
LITERATURE AND THE MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COMIC NOVEL; Ph.D
1997; Tim J. Prior, Department of Bnglish, University of
Toronto.
This thesis examines the appearance of the grotesque
body in Henry FieldingDs Joseph Andrews, Tobias Smollettrs
Hump- Clinker, and Laurence Sterners histram Shandy in
relation to its appearance in the literature of courtesy.
Such works as Jean Baptiste de Monran Bellegarde's
Reflexions upon Ridicule, Giovanni Della Casa, s Galateo, and
Henry Fielding's own essays on courtesy demonstrate the
exemplary usage of a rhetorical structure that holds what
Bakhtin terms the classical and grotesque bodies in
significant antithesis. However, contrary to Bakhtin's view
of the beneficial subversiveness of the grotesque body, the
literature of courtesy uses representations of the grotesque
body to explore, to express, and to validate positive social
values associated with the classical body.
The grotesque body is contained within a static order
centred on the classical body; and in the novels I examine,
this rhetoric of contaimaent appears in a number of ways.
In Joseph Rndrews, the significance of the night
episode at Booby hall is developed through the grotesque
activity of Abraham Adams, Mrs. Slipslop, and Beau Didapper.
However, their energetic grotesquerie is contained and
ultimately diffused by the presence and activity of Fanny,
Joseph, and Lady Booby.
The grotesque in Himphy Clinker is contextualized by
- ii -
ideals of intellectual and moral perfection centred on the
persons of Lydia Melford and George Dennison. Lydia
embodies and eroticizes the desire for retirement in a
perfect natural environment that increasingly animates
Matthew Bramble8s dramatic progress, while George Dennison
incarnates a classical body that is representative of a
social order in which the principle of subordination and the
prerogatives of rank are duly recognized.
Tristam Shmdy parodies the narrow attention to
details of physical comportment characteristic of courtesy
literature, habitually overturning the decorums that tend to
proceed from the classical body isolated in its distinctive
sphere. The ideal of sexual lave that is variously invoked
in the novel does not escape the body's particularity, but
is drawn into the realm of the grotesque by me desire for
the erotic body that fixates on how that body may be
entered. All bodies inescapably participate in the body's
grotesque and aimless existence.
I am deeply grateful for the financial support of the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Coucil of Canada,
without which the completion of this thesis would not have
been possible.
I would also like to thank my wife, Mona Mitchener, for
her assistance, her patience, and her love throughout the
course of this project.
This thesis is dedicated to the manory of my parents, Joseph
Prior and Charlotte German Prior.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Reading the Grotesque
3. The Courteous Body
4. Keeping Order in Joseph Andrews:
The Night Scene at Booby Hall
5. nImproper Objects of Mirthw:
Lydia Melford and George D d s o n
in Htmlphry Clinker
6. Grotesquing the Ideal
in Tristram SE€ KK&
7. Conclusion
Works Cited
LIST OF FIGDRES
Figure I
Chapter One
Introduction
This thesis will examine same aspects of the grotesque
in three mid-eighteenth-century novels through the lens of
courtesy literature. What I will show is that courtesy
literature of the period utilizes a characteristic
rhetorical structure for representing the relationship
between what Bakhtin refers to as the classical and the
grotesque bodies. This structure, as I call it, is
constituted by the regular use of the grotesque body to
explore, to express, and ultimately to validate values
associated with the classical body. This rhetorical
structure--thism ode of representation--is reproduced in
varying ways in Fielding's Joseph Aodrews (1742), Smollett ' s
Kumphy Clinker (1771) and Sterners Tristram Shan* (1760-
67) , each of which bears a distinct relation to discourse
concerned w i t h physical manners. Fielding's invocation of
Bellegarde and his Reflexions on Ridicule in the Preface to
Joseph Andrews is an explicit connection of the novelist's
didactic ambitions with those of the courtesy writer.'
'
Fielding's allusion to the French courtesy writer
Jean Baptiste de M o m B ellegarde in the Preface to Joseph
Rndrews suggested to me the choice of that navel over the
perhaps more traditionally satisfying Tom Jones.
Additionally, the smaller cawas of Joseph Rndrews makes its
effects more obvious in comparison to the intricacy of
detail that necessarily arises from the later work's
expansive plot. Both the maturity and cqlexity of Hrrmahry
Clinkerfs satire and the quality of the novel's
verisimilitude both in its action and characters dictated
its choice over Smollett's earlier work. And as will be