Letteratura inglese 1

The forging of the British nation: 1707

Act of Union - ‘Religious’ wars Self vs Aliens

1707 a united nation

➔ Act of Union joining Scotland to England and Wales

◆ most people were loyal to the new nation, conforming to its ideas and ideals,

◆ and expected gains from this commitment

a sense of British national identity (Britishness) was forged, representative of

◆ the nation and of one’s belonging to it

Religious’ War

‘

➔ mainly against Catholic France

◆ ● a real threat to Protestantism in England

its main objective was the invasion of Britain in support of the Catholic Stuart

◆ monarchs

Steps of the ‘evolution’ of Britishness 1707

➔ An imagined community, artificially forged as all nations, Britain was made

◆ by imposing a sense of unity over cultural and ethnic complexity

in its case, against an ‘enemy’ or ‘Other’ Catholic France and ‘pagan’

◆ non-Europeans defined the British: an alien ‘them’ unified a diverse

community into a reassuring, self-defensive ‘us’

‘community cements’ up to the late 19th century 1707-1775/83 (American

◆ War of Independence) Protestantism, trade and empire 1776-19th cent. people

became assertively British: all classes were drawn into national affairs and

defense as never before, due to the shock of Peace and rebellions in the

colonies

How it may end when the ‘others’ disappear, the union is at risk, having no

◆ intrinsic raison d’être: Protestantism is now only a residual part of Britain’s

identity, and the empire has ended

Britishness has yet left an indelible mark in Europe and the world at large

◆ because the British impacted on more places around the world than any other

nation via their colonizing aggressiveness, their military and commercial

enterprises

The void of a real identity?

Rule Britannia (1740) w. James Thomson m. by Thomas Arne

➔ representing the dynamic by which British national identity was being forged

◆ ● How exactly?

● The song ‘displays’ the qualities composing the British nation

○ divine origins

○ supremacy offshore, abroad • what they are not: slaves, tyrants

Why isn’t a specific identity defined?

The 1707 Act of Union was a political act not a union

◆ of affection

Protestantism was the cement as a response to external

◆ threats. Britons started to mean ‘a people apart’, better

than others

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Protestantism, Trade, Colonialism: The substance of

Britishness (1707-1837)

Protestants, dissidents, Catholics Since 1700 Catholics were treated as non-British:

could not vote, excluded from all state offices and the Parliament,

➔ no access to education

➔ No freedom of warship

➔ subject to punitive taxation

➔ forbidden to possess weapons, property rights

➔

Protestant dissenters were partially discriminated against:

could vote if qualified by their property

➔ had to conform at least occasionally to Anglican worship to accede to public offices,

➔ including the Parliament

after the Toleration Act of 1689 could worship freely

➔ could set up their own academies to educate their children

➔ could own and carry arms.

➔ The root of Intolerance

➔ a collective memory in progress,

◆ composed of special dates, almanacs, patriotic sermons

◆ reminding people of their embattled Protestantism in need to be fought over

◆ again and again

‘A chosen people’,

➔ Britain was compared to Israel, as blessed by God, triumphant after sufferance

◆ and persecution

William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ (1801) exemplifies this myth and its longevity

◆ Another examples is Israel by George Frederick Handel, composed for

◆ George’s II’s coronation of 1727, that contains regular comparisons between

events in British history and the struggles of the prophets and heroes of the

Old Testament He bids the circling seasons shine, Recalls the olive and the

vine, With blooming plenty loads the plain, And crowds the field with golden

grain • It’s played to these days as coronation anthem

A rich and fruitful land for ‘the chosen people’

Wealthy and poor Britons believed themselves rich in opposition to the miserable

➔ French/Catholics

See Hogarth’s painting:

➔ Pride in abundance as the token of an elect nation rested on agriculture but

➔ increasingly so on commerce

The pride of being an advanced nation with a

parliament

1745 the future British national anthem was first sung publicly, summoned up a

➔ people exposed to struggle but redeemed through faith (as in Rule Britannia,

Jerusalem, or Israel):

The would-be Stuart king after marching through Scotland was now heading

➔ southwards! 2

They found union and comfort in this hymn (ironically, invented by supporters of the

➔ exiled Stuart dynasty!)

Hogarth, March to Finchley

The two women contending for the officer stand for the question: is Britain to remain

➔ true to the Hanoverian dynasty or would it succumb to the Stuarts? The answer is

self-evident

Britain, the state and the ideas that people held about it, were inextricably linked with

➔ perceptions of Catholicism and Protestantism

The monarchy had been forcibly made to rely on Protestantism: in 1688 and in 1714

➔ the rules of dynastic succession were broken to avoid the evil of Catholicism

The Parliament met more frequently fostering unity

➔ Collective identity was formed: a united and powerful nation protected by God’s

➔ providence.

Trade and colonialism with reference to Robinson

Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels

Slavery and consumerism in Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels

By the beginning of the 1700 when the two novels were published, Britain had

➔ plantations in the Caribbean, where the lucrative sugar cane was cultivated to produce

the time’s craze, sugar.

RC explicitly marks the productivity map of this and other colonial goods that made

➔ the fortune and the luxury of Europe and Britain. It seems that Defoe had written the

novel with the explicit intent of indicating the business for the newly established

South Sea company, which had been granted the asiento, the permission to trade in

human beings, i.e., to load ships on the coast of western Africa and take them as

labour force to South America and the West Indies.

GT journeys are far more imaginative, the places Gulliver travels to a combination of

➔ Britain and its relations with its colonies abroad: Swift is generally preoccupied with

the moral corruption and unrestrained consumerism among the British than with the

inhuman practice of the slave trade, which, however, is subtly referred to via the use

of humanized animals and the humiliating misadventures of Gulliver himself.

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The assiento, the novel talks about, was the monopoly contract between the Spanish crown

and merchants of other nations giving them the ‘right’ to provide enslaved Africans to the

Spanish colonies

Gulliver in the land of the horses, the Houyhnhnms

I replied ‘that England was computed to produce three times the quantity of food more than

its inhabitants are able to consume, as well as liquors extracted from grain, which made

excellent drink, and the same proportion in every other convenience of life. But, in order to

feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away

the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, whence, in return, we brought the

materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence vast numbers of our

people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating,

flattering, gaming, lying, scribbling, star-gazing, whoring. ‘That wine was not imported

among us from foreign countries to supply the want of water or other drinks, but because it

was a sort of liquid which made us merry by putting us out of our senses, diverted all

melancholy thoughts; although it must be confessed, that we always awaked sick and

dispirited. ‘But beside all this, the bulk of our people supported themselves by furnishing the

necessities or conveniences of life to the rich and to each other. For instance, when I am at

home, and dressed as I ought to be, I carry on my body the workmanship of a hundred

tradesmen; the building and furniture of my house employ as many more, and five times the

number to adorn my wife.

Trade IS Britain - 18th-cent Britain, commerce and

the trading in human being

“There was never from the earliest ages a time in which trade so much engaged the

➔ attention of mankind, or commercial gain was sought with such general emulation.''

(Samuel Johnson)

“The whole earth is the market of Britain; and while we remain at home safe and

➔ undisturbed, have all the products and commodities of the eastern and western Indies

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brought to us in our ships and delivered into our hands our island has put on quite a

different face, since the increase of commerce among us. In a word, commerce is the

first mover, the main spring in the political machine, and that which gives life and

motion to the whole and sets all the inferior wheels to work.”

(Reverend Catcott)

Refined taste and consumerism derived from the

slave trade and the colonies

“The case is as plain as cause and consequence: Mark the climax. No African trade,

➔ no negroes, no sugars, gingers, indigoes etc.; no sugars etc. no islands; no islands no

continent; no continent no trade.”

“[It is] an Advantage to our Manufacturers, an increasing the Employment of the

➔ Poor, a Support to our General Commerce, and an Addition to the General Stock of

the Nation. ... Negroes are as essential to the Sugar Works at Barbados, Jamaica ... as

Wind is to the Ships that bring it Home.” (Daniel Defoe)

Robinson Crusoe ‘the Briton’ and

how to read his story

The book of the British race - V. Woolf

➔

“The book resembles one of the anonymous productions of the race rather than the effort of a

single mind. Something of this we may attribute to the fact that we have all had Robinson

Crusoe read aloud to us as children and were thus much in the same state in mind towards

Defoe and his story that the Greeks were towards Homer. The impressions of childhood are

those that last longer and cut deepest.”

How to read the novel

➔

“There are many ways of approaching this classical volume; but which shall we choose?

However, we may wind and wriggle, loiter and dally in our approach to books, a lonely battle

waits us at the end. There is a piece of business to be transacted between writer and reader

before any further dealings are possible, and to be reminded in the middle of this private

interview that Defoe sold stockings, had brown hair, and was stood in the pillory is a

distraction and a worry. Our first task, and it is often formidable enough, is to master his

perspective. Until we know how the novelist orders his world, the ornaments of that world,

which the critics press upon us, the adventures of the writer, to which biographers draw

attention, are superfluous possessions of which we can make no use. All alone we must climb

upon the novelist’s shoulders and gaze through his eyes until we, too, understand in what

order he ranges the common objects upon which novelists are fated to gaze: man and men;

behind them Nature; and above them that power which for convenience and brevity we may

call God.”

The ‘prophetic’ book of British colonialism

“In 1660 the Stuart dynasty had set forever, and Protestant succession, embodied by William

of Nassau, had become the cornerstone of the British constitution. The Anglo-Saxon dynasty

was to ascend to the throne of England. The people who acclaimed the coming of the Dutch

commander were acclaiming themselves and saluting the human symbol of a true rebirth. For

the first time now, the true English spirit begins to appear in literature. European criticism has

struggled for several generations to illuminate the mystery of the immense world conquest

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achieved by that hybrid race which lives a tough life on a small island in the northern sea.

The true symbol of the British conquest is Robinson Crusoe. He is the true prototype of the

British colonist just as Friday is the symbol of the subject race. All the Anglo-Saxon soul is

in Crusoe: virile independence, unthinking cruelty, persistence, slow yet effective

intelligence, sexual apathy, practical and wellbalanced religiosity, calculating dourness.

Whoever re-reads this simple and moving book in the light of subsequent history cannot but

be taken by its prophetic spell. (J. Joyce)

Robinson Crusoe – reading guide in progress

Part I – His life at home and growing aspiration to travel abroad, his first local

➔ travels, his travels to West Africa, and his being rescued by a Portuguese ship that

takes him to ‘the Brasils’, where he lives as a planter in a Portuguese colony.

Part II – His departure for West Africa, shipwreck, and 28-year stay on a Caribbean

➔ Island close to Trinidad, by the mouth of the Oronoko River.

Part III – His return to Britain.

➔ Read and reflect

➔ Part I: read pp.5-36 (62-93 of the pdf) and focus on the following points by

◆ underlining relevant passages or even single words and by taking notes (where

you find connections with our class discussions or if you wish to make a

comment/observation):

● A) His family and young Robinson’s problems especially with his

father.

● B) His nightmarish first experience with navigation and its impact

upon his life.

● C) Out of his first trip to West Africa, Robinson makes good money,

what does he do with it?

● D) On a very unfortunate second journey to West Africa, Robinson

gets captured by the Moors: how does he respond to this period of

bondage?

● E) During his escape from the Moors, Robinson gets in contact with

West African people and the environment: indicate significant

facts/episodes

● F) His relationship with the Portuguese captain that rescues him and

the community of planters he becomes part of ‘in the Brazils’.

Focus on the novel: Which story? Which main topic?

The story is composed of three main movements:

➔ Setting out

: Robinson’s life, from when, an 18- year-old youngster with a

◆ strong desire to going to sea, he embarks on his first ship ventures in Britain

and on the West African coast, to when, years later, he settles as a planter in

the Portuguese colonies ‘of the Brazils’, then to set out again for West Africa

but, shipwrecked, is cast away onto a Caribbean Island.

Settling down

: Robinson is obliged to live on this Caribbean Island, very

◆ close to Trinidad by the mouth of the mighty Oronoko River, for 28 years.

Returning

: Robinson returns to Britain and yet continues travelling back to

◆ the island he had turned into a colony

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What is it all about?

A life emblematic of ‘British national identity’ under way, of how it was fashioned

➔ and embodied by many Britons of the time, a seafaring life generative and conductive

of main ideas and ideals that were composing the nation: Protestantism (as Providence

assisting the conquering Britons ‘rule the waves’), exploitation of markets and

colonies.

A life and a nation defined by international trade. Robinson’s journeys take place

➔ along the route of Europe’s early capitalism, the international market-places of

colonial goods and human beings:

1) by the conclusion of the book’s first part, thanks to his family’s economic

◆ help in carrying out his dirty trade in Africa, Robinson had gathered his first

stock and fortune, which he leaves in London by an English captain-slaver’s

widow;

2) this capital is transferred ‘to the Brazils’ where he has become a wealthy

◆ Planter of sugarcane and tobacco, and where it is made to thrive immensely by

a loyal partner while he’s shipwrecked on the isle;

3) back to Europe the multiplied income from his plantation is sent to

◆ Robinson who finds himself immensely rich and who, however, decides to

keep travelling, to triangulate and circulate like the very capital composing his

story.

Doubts. The reader is taken to follow Robinson’s mis/adventures and asked to assess

➔ its value

Setting out [pdf pp. 62-93]

➔ Around Britain and Africa

◆ ● His family and young Robinson’s problems especially with his father.

● His nightmarish first experience with navigation and its impact upon

his life.

● Out of his first travel to West Africa, Robinson makes good money,

what does he do with it?

Fleeing bondage

◆ ● On a very unfortunate second journey to West Africa, Robinson gets

captured by the Moors: how does he respond to this period of

bondage?

● During his escape from the Moors, Robinson gets in contact with West

African people and the environment: indicate significant facts/episodes

Across the Atlantic to Brazil

◆ ● a European family of ‘honest merchants’

● His relationship with the Portuguese captain that rescues him and the

community of planters he becomes part of ‘in the Brazils’.

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➔ 25.10

He’s never been able to have a job so he was proud of himself when he started to sell slaves.

storms and hurricanes symbolism

storm: means, literally speaking, something that ruins a normal situation. in the novel the

storm impedisce a robinson

The island is a part physical, a physical place. It is a symbolic place. It was like a castaway on

an island. Light and sea are symbols.

INSIGHTS ON ROBINSON’S ISLAND LIFE

He finds a sugar cane. The author is making fun of his own character.

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA AND THE ISLAND….

the sea is seen negatively in other novels; you rather stay at home. but in Robinson the city

has become based on commerce, the city continues at sea. to be at home= to be at sea. the sea

has become positive because the city is corrupted.

robinson is in between the classic and the romantic prospective

THE