PART TWO: JOURNEYS IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY(1680S – 1790S):INTRODUCTIONPREPARED BY DR. HEND HAMED

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATRE

THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The long eighteenth century was bracketed by two major upheavals in European history:

1- The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 in England2- The French Revolution of 1789This period was characterized by the rapid expansion of

European power around the globe.

MAJOR HISTORICAL EVENTS THAT CONTRIBUTED TO EUROPE’S ASCENDENCY

The collapse or decline of other competing empires,The improvements in European modes of warfare and military technology,The increase in the number African slaves transported to the Americas,The European discovery and commercial exploitation of new lands in the

Indian and Pacific Oceans, The consolidation and expansion of East India Company rule in India in

1757, The accelerated economic penetration of North American following the

Seven Years War (1756 – 63) between Britain and France.

MAJOR HISTORICAL EVENTS THAT CONTRIBUTED TO EUROPE’S ASCENDENCY These important events in the Middle and Far East, the Indian

and Pacific Oceans, Africa, India, and the Americas, had opened European eyes to many more worlds beyond their own.

For the many peoples outside Europe, their lives were permanently changed or even abruptly ended by the arrival, colonization or settlement on their lands of ever increasing numbers of European travelers.

HISTORY OF TRAVEL WRITING

This global expansion of European power was accompanied by a proliferation of writing on journeys and travel. Before the eighteenth century, there had been many texts about journeys and travel in a variety of different genres.

HISTORY OF TRAVEL WRITING:A. GREEK TRAVEL WRITING

Journeys are fundamental to two of founding texts of European literature: Homer’s epic The Odyssey (c.880 BCE)[the hero Odysseus travelling great distances and overcoming some obstacles on his way home] and Herodotus’ Histories (c. 450 BCE – c. 420 BCE) [digresses from the history of the Greco-Persian War to recount half-factual, half-mythic travelers’ tales].

A third variety of ancient Greek travel writing is the tourist guidebook. It introduced Roman visitors to Greek sites like the Acropolis.

HISTORY OF TRAVEL WRITING:B. THE MIDDLE AGES

During the European Middle Ages, descriptions of journeys were central in other genres of writing, most notably Christian accounts of pilgrimages and crusades, but also in factual travelogues like the late 13th century Travels of Marco Polo and the writings of the North African traveler Ibn Battuta (1304 – c. 1368).

There were also the Travels (1356) by John Mandeville, which combined serious observations of people and their customs with fanciful tales of giants, headless men and pygmies.

HISTORY OF TRAVEL WRITING:C. THE RENAISSANCE

In the Renaissance, travelers’ tales were appropriated for yet another use by Thomas More (1478 – 1535) in his Utopia (1516), which filtered his critique of early 16th century England.

Subsequent Utopian fictions, such as New Atlantis (1627) by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and The Isle of Pines (1688) by Henry Neville (1620-1694) travelled imaginatively to distant lands in order to criticize British society.

HISTORY OF TRAVEL WRITING:C. THE RENAISSANCE

In the same period, the motif of journeying was used by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) in his picaresque novel tale Don Quixote (1605, 1615), in order both to mock, and to critique in more serious mode the conventions and values associated with the chivalric romance.

HISTORY OF TRAVEL WRITING:D. THE 17TH CENTURY

During the 17th century, the fictional spiritual autobiography, exemplified by The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) by John Bunyan (1628-1688), drew heavily upon descriptions of journeys both real and imaginary.

HISTORY OF TRAVEL WRITING:E. THE 18TH CENTURY

Hence, in addition to writing about journeys in a wide variety of genres, such as epic, history writing, tourist guide, religious quest, non-fictional travel narratives, utopia, picaresque tale, or spiritual biography, many other kinds of writing associated with travel were published, circulated and consumed in the 18th century: the personal letters and diaries of travelers, the accounts of wealthy young men or their tutors on the ‘Grand Tour’ to classical sites of Italy, the reports of merchants and missionaries to their superiors based in Europe, the captain’s log-books and ships’ journals from long voyages, and the collected observations of travelling doctors, botanists, and cartographers.

AN INCREASE IN PUBLICATIONS

Sheer quantity of prose was published in the long eighteenth century. In Britain, the emergent middle class’ appetite for reading was met by

a rapid increase in the numbers of books, magazines, periodicals and newspapers published.

The majority of publications were religious and political tracts, but there were also increasing numbers of fictional and non-fictional travel narratives.

FICTIONAL AND NON-FICTIONAL GENRES

The emerging fictional genre of the novel borrowed from the non-fictional travel narrative in order to simulate historical similarities, and many novels addressed readers in the same form and language as factual travelogues. For example, Candide gives an impression of historical authenticity by claiming to have been translated from the German text of ‘Doctor Ralph’.

Such narrative strategies were evident in many prose works such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

DE/CONTEXTUALIZATION OF TEXTS

Literary critics have not always been interested in the contexts of literary texts; indeed up until the 1970s, the dominant literary-critical orthodoxy dictated that the meanings of literary analysis of the words should be determined exclusively by the formal analysis of the words on the page, with no reference to extra-textual evidence. Known in Britain as ‘practical criticism’ and in the United States as ‘New Criticism’, this de-contextualized method of reading and studying literature came under assault when the post-1968 generation of readers and critics brought their quite distinct political and cultural sensibilities to bear upon the criticism of literature.

DE/CONTEXTUALIZATION OF TEXTS

Today, most critics study the multiple contexts of literary texts with the same close attention they dedicate to the literary texts themselves.

In Candide, our attention to its contexts is developed further by distinguishing between the many different kinds of contexts: the historical, the economic, the political, the cultural, the literary, the religious, and the philosophical. For example, in analyzing Candide, you will relate the literary text to Voltaire’s philosophical context.

DE/CONTEXTUALIZATION OF TEXTS

By paying sustained attention to the diverse 18th century contexts of these selected travelers’ tales, we demonstrate more generally how the formal analysis of a text can be enhanced by the simultaneous engagement with its context(s).

One final context we might consider; the present: What do writings on the journeys of the long 18th century mean for us today? In fact, these texts, from 200 years ago, dramatize social tensions which continue to trouble us today. Voltaire’s Candide poses questions about finding faith and hope in an unforgiving universe.