Main Points:

Ø  The experience of reading in 18^th c. was deeply troubling to some people

o   Literacy levels were not increasing more rapidly than before, but there was a tremendous amount of new literature available

o   à Anxiety over the ways readers responded to literature, especially in regards to fiction

Ø  Samuel Richardson was very concerned about the types of fiction that the youth were reading (i.e. Haywood, Defoe, etc.)

o   In his mid-50s, Richardson joined forces with a group of men who sought to reform theater and fiction

o   Richardson decided to reprint the writings of Pepelope Aubin

o   In essence, Aubin's novels are the inverse of Haywood's novels à moralizing content à Morality through entertainment

Ø  Though Haywood tries to create a more realistic world, Richardson is far more worried about a set of moral ruled concerning fiction

o   Richardson’s fiction must include:

§  Purity and style of manners (i.e. none of Haywood’s sexual scenes)

§  Subjects who “recommend the duties of social life”

§  Punishment of guilty characters

§  Success for virtuous characters

§  An “air of probability” (i.e. it must be somewhat believable)

Ø  In his preface, Richardson refers to the human mind numerous times

o   Looks to the Lockean idea of forming the human mind from a blank slate into an adult mind

o   Richardson must offer a positive example of someone who is good and succeeds à Help transform adolescents’ “blank slates” into morally discerning minds

Ø  Uses a series of familiar letters to frame the story of Pamela

o   Called “familiar” letters because they are designed to be the letters that pass back and forth between family members

o   Inspiration for epistolary form drawn from formatting guides for the writing of familiar letters, most notably from a set of letters written between a daughter and father in the same situation as Pamela and her father

Close reading of one passage from class:

"Preface" to A Collection of Entertaining Histories and Novels

Bottom of the first page of the pdf file. The paragraph beginning “As these kinds of writings…”

 This passage explains in depth Aubin’s rules to which Richardson feels that a book should be written.

1. A purity of style and manners
2. Recommends duties of social life
3. Guilty characters must be punished
4. Virtuous characters must succeed
5. The work must have an air of probability

Rule 1 implies that an Eliza Haywood novel with sexualized characters and descriptions should not be allowed.

Rule 2 implies that a book should teach a correct response to duties.

Rules 3-5 can be contradictory due to the implications that are associated with each rule. These rules all together are deeply problematic and unreal, typically impossible. The need for eternal divine justice is to happen explicitly in the book.

The rules themselves are not typically plausible because of how there are set up.

The idea of a doctrine of poetic justice: where in the end of a work especially a play that good characters are rewarded and the bad characters are punished. This representing an adequate justice comparable to that of divine justice in holding up the letter of God’s plan and to mirror the justice at such a divine level leading this to assume a sense of eternal justice.        

But there are issues with this. As an example from lecture – where would Shakespeare fit into this form? eg. King Lear or Hamlet would not work.

There is also the issue of probability. It is not probable that Alovisa would run herself onto the sword or that Susan, Roxana’s daughter, would happen to be a servant to her. These and many instances are not plausible instead often absurdity ensues to make the other rules somehow work.

Explanation of a Referent:

In the preface to Penelope Aubin's novel, there is a reference to another one of her works, The Life of Carlotta du Pont.  This text was published in 1723.  It combined a number of the popular genres of the time, that of travel fiction and amatory novels.  The novel follows Aubin's theme of having a heroine who travels to distant lands and is constantly impeded by men who are trying to ruin their virtue.  Aubin ensures to encorporate a Chrisitian morality into this novel, a morality that is seen in her heroine, Marie, who denies her attacker, a Turkish potentate, the chance to ravish her by tearing out her own eyeballs and throwing them at him.  This extreme measure that was taken to maintain her virtuosity shows the importance that this concept had to Aubin.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4688378/Virtuous-voyages-in-Penelope-Aubin.html

Here's the link: http://web.missouri.edu/~ecf4hf/richardson/resources.html

The useful website for this wiki is the webpage of the Samuel Richardson Society. I stumbled across the page by accident, and quickly noticed that there is a wealth of information about the author of Pamela available. The site features an enormous list of resources (both print and online) that will put you in touch with Richardson's biographical, literary, and personal histories. I recommend looking through some of the online resources they list; "The Rise of Novels: A research page" is a great way to find out more about the man himself. With our discussion in class so focused on Richardson's motivations for writing Pamela, I figured this would be a solid means of digging into those reasons on your own. We talked about his businessman past, and cited that as practical qualification for his career as a writer. In conjunction with his ability with words, his sense of morality was addressed as a likely source for his inspiration to write the Book of Letters we looked at on Thursday. You can find out more about both those aspects of Richardson's life with the resources at the Samuel Richardson Society's web site.