Dividing the Kingdom: Non-Monarchical Perioditization of English Lit

The question of whether it makes sense to divide English literature into a category in alignment with English monarchs’ reigns such as George III’s (1760-1820) has been widely debated in the field of literary/cultural studies, with scholars such as Laura Doyle arguing that the central, formative role of English-language literature was race over a period of three centuries, locating the impetus in Parliament, religious refugees and new Atlantic merchants and Steve Newman showing how the “low” cultural output of the ballad helped to transform literature from the polite writing into the imaginative body of writing that became known as the English literary canon. Doyle and Newman’s arguments have shown that there are more productive ways of understanding and perioditizing literature than who the reigning monarch was. This essay addresses my conception of the function of literary history with special attention to literature and contemporaneous political events and cultural currents. Specifically in this essay, I will be looking at a few exemplary literary works spanning this (I argue) artificial timeframe of 1760 to 1820 in order to show how little it mattered that George III was in power to the composition and public reception and literary response to these major works. After overviewing some events that happened to occur during George III’s reign to deconstruct the importance of his reign on literature and its history, I will then zoom in on specific works of literature to discuss Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and its timeless, postmodern qualities; the impact of France’s political writing and events on one of the most important English writers of all time, Mary Wollstonecraft; and I will then reflect briefly on the quintessential “Regency” author, Jane Austen and her work Mansfield Park. This essay will juxtapose Sterne, Wollstonecraft, and Austen against the historical events and currents that are more important than the fact that a “George” was in power to reveal my conception of literary history. I argue that it does not make sense to speak of a late Georgian period of English literature because the function of literary history is to assist and further our understanding of the cultural impacts of, and on, literature.

While George III was alive until 1820, his son George IV had already been in power for about a decade since he took over in 1811 as the Prince Regent and the overlapping Regency Period commenced. Still some other historians extend this Georgian Period through the short reign of King William IV until the formal commencement of the Victorian era in 1837. Even as Britain extended its empire throughout the Atlantic World, it continued to be influenced by events from the Continent such as it always had, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to Romanticism, all of which literary/cultural movements originated outside of England. The Scottish Enlightenment, for instance, happened to take place during the Georgian period but this was not brought on by the monarch but, rather, ideas circulating in via print from the Continent. Empire, trade, political and social revolts–none of these major influencing factors on the literature, the social and cultural climate to which writers were reacting and encompassing within their poetry and prose, are directly attributable to the monarch. One of the most important events in English history, the passage of William Wilberforce’s Slavery Abolition Act through Parliament, occurred in the gray area after George IV and before Queen Victoria’s ascension, in 1833. While the monarch was still a powerful force that impacted history, arguably this power had been diminishing for years as the monarch increasingly shared legislative power with Parliament, and thus exercised diminishing control over literature as well. Other historical events that occurred outside of the monarch’s control, but that had powerful impacts on literature included the American Revolutionary War and Declaration of Independence (1775-1776); Parliament’s Aboltion of the Slave Trade Act in 1807; and the French Revolution from 1789-1799. Even as it reacts to specific events and the cultural mood surrounding and influencing them, literature defies socially constructed categorical imperatives.

Tristram Shandy (1759) defies so many categorical odds that it is widely considered the first postmodern novel, before there was any modern to be post; it supports a function of literary history transcendent of monarch and of time itself. The reason why we continue to study Tristram Shandy is not because of who happened to be the monarch at that time but, rather, the literary innovations that resulted from Sterne’s philosophical commitment to lambasting the cultural motif of writing one’s “life and opinions” and the utter impossibility of doing so. Sterne, as Tristram, writes that he cannot even define his own life based on logical events in a logical sequence but “from an unhappy association of ideas, that have no connection to nature”: 

“It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up, —— but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head — and vice versâ: —— Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious Locke, who certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever. But this by the bye.”

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

Locke’s “understanding” of time is “by the bye.” Tristram Shandy derives meaning from his experience not from any logical sequence of events such as even whether the “clock” was “wound up.” Tristram Shandy propels itself forward from “sentimental” to “sensibility” to “romanticism”–not from George II to III to Victoria. While these monarchs happen to be in power at that time, the literature is in response to more complex cultural factors at play that have very little to do with who the monarch was.

While Tristram Shandy offers a conception of literary history that transcends time, Wollstonecraft’s writing shows the importance of a conception of literary history that transcends borders. Her Vindication of the Rights of Men, Women, and Short Residence are English outpourings from France. Rousseau’s Confessions had a profound effect on one of the most important literary writers in English history: Mary Wollstonecraft. She disagreed explicitly with his writing Emile in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman–which was in reaction not to who the English monarch was at the time, but to the events in France after which she responded to Burke’s analysis in print in her Vindication of the Rights of Man. Wollstonecraft did resonate with Rousseau’s conception of himself as a “solitary walker,” which name she called herself in Letters Written during a Short Residence, which work was credited with inspiring Coleridge, Wordsworth and of course, William Godwin, who fell in love with her when reading it, he wrote in Memoirs of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Further, the business dealings for which she was traveling on behalf of American,Gilbert Imlay, displays the Trans-Atlantic influence on English literature that pervaded Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing. She lived in France during its Revolution, returned to England and embarked on a journey North. Her writings have their roots rather in France than in the British monarch. 

Quintessential “Regency Era” Austen displaces the importance of the monarchy itself, even in her writing of domestic fiction within the bounds of time and within the English border in which the monarch ruled. Neither displacing time as does Tristram Shandy nor explicitly addressing trans-English-border concerns, Austen locates Mansfield Park in England with an eye toward Antigua; the effects of colonization abroad within the bounds of the English home. Even so, her 1814 novel Mansfield Park responds to political events within England that have trans-Atlantic consequences not on the part of the monarch, but of a British judge. Mansfield Park is widely determined to derive its title from Judge Mansfield’s decision which enacted effectually the abolishment of the slave trade. One year after publishing Mansfield Park in 1814, in 1815, Austen was essentially coerced into dedicating her next novel, Emma, to the Prince against her will. Her novels may epitomize the Georgian Period of English literature, but she (like many other women at that time who sided with his spouse in their public affairs) loathed the Prince Regent. While Austen was forced to place her novel under the guise of being influenced by George IV, literary scholars no longer have any obligation to the monarchy. 

This essay, by closely examining literature that spans this artificial Georgian Period, sheds light on the function of literary history. Not only did George III not even technically rule England for the entire period in question–his son George IV taking over while he was unable to rule–the literature itself, from the beginning to the middle and tail end of the Georgian period shares little in common other than that they are reacting, responding to and shaping political events of their time not associated with the monarch but, rather, with philosophical ideas circulating from the Enlightenment and Locke (as exemplified by Sterne), events in Parliament, France (as attested by the writing of Wollstonecraft), and the Mansfield Decision (Austen Mansfield Park as a primary example) made by a judge, not the king. While Austen was compelled to dedicate her work to the monarch, scholars, as Doyle and Newman have shown, no longer have to.