The struggle for the authority of history: The French Revolution debate and the British novel, 1790-1814
Creators: name: Rooney, Morgan
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2009
Subjects: subject: Literature, Modern.
subject: History, European.
subject: Literature, English.

description: This thesis examines the history of the British novel from 1790 to 1814, arguing that the struggle for the authority of history that took place over the course of the French Revolution debate is foundational to understanding the novel's development in the period. In the political tracts of the 1790s, the Revolution controversy begins as a representational contest over the status of one historical moment (1688) and then escalates into a broad ideological war over the significance of the past for the present and future. The era's various novelistic forms participate in this ideological war, with Jacobin and anti-Jacobin novels, for instance, representing moments of the past or otherwise vying to enlist the authority of history to further a reformist or loyalist agenda, respectively. As the Revolution crisis recedes at the turn of the century, new forms of the novel emerge with new agendas, but historical representation---largely the legacy of the 1790s' novel---remains as an increasingly prevalent feature of the genre. The representation of history in the novel, I argue, is initially used strategically by novelists involved in the Revolution debate, is appropriated for other (often related) causes, and ultimately develops into a stable, non-partisan, aestheticised feature of the form. The novel's transformations in the 1790s, 1800s, and early 1810s thus help to establish the conditions for the emergence of the historical novel as it was first realised in Walter Scott's Waverley (1814). Chapter 1 reviews the political tracts of prominent contributors to the Revolution debate such as Edmund Burke, Richard Price, James Mackintosh, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, demonstrating the widespread engagement with history characteristic of the period and the distinctive historical paradigms reformers and loyalists invoke in support of their political positions. Chapters 2 and 3 examine how the historical discourses of the 1790s shape the anti-Jacobin and Jacobin novel, respectively. Using Charles Walker, Robert Bisset, and Jane West as its primary examples, chapter 2 argues that the antiJacobin novel draws heavily on Burkean historical discourse to develop a variety of tactics---including the representation of select historical moments and conscious attempts to "historicise" their works---whose goal is to characterise the reform movement as ignorant of the complex operations of historical accretion. Turning to Charlotte Smith, William Godwin, and Maria Edgeworth as its principal examples, chapter 3 shows how reformist novels appeal to the period's discourses of history to respond in kind, contesting Burke's logic by consciously travestying his tropes and arguments, by undermining and then re-defining the category of history, and by depicting in detail historical moments that challenge the Burkean paradigm. Investigating the work of Jane Porter, Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan), and Walter Scott, chapter 4 demonstrates how early historical forms of the novel and, ultimately, the historical novel as it was realised by Scott emerge, in part, out of the legacy of the political novels of the 1790s. It argues that the novel experiences a generic shift in the early nineteenth century---one marked by continuity, re-deployment, and departure--whereby the political impetus for historical representation is ultimately displaced by aesthetic and, crucially, historicist concerns.