Disaffected Parties : Political Estrangement and the Making of English Literature, 1760-1830

Disaffected Parties reveals how alienation from politics effected crucial changes to the shape and status of literary form. Recovering the earliest expressions of grumbling, irritability, and cynicism towards politics, this study asks how unsettled partisan legacies converged with more recent discontents to forge a seminal period in the making of English literature, and thereby poses wide-ranging questions about the lines between politics and aesthetics. Reading works including Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, the novels of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and the satirical poetry of Lord Byron in tandem with print culture and partisan activity, this book shows how these writings remained animated by disaffected impulses and recalcitrant energies at odds with available party positions and emerging governmental normseven as they sought to imagine perspectives that looked beyond the divided political world altogether. 'No one can be more sick of-or indifferent to politics than I am' Lord Byron wrote in 1820. Between the later eighteenth century and the Romantic age, disaffected political attitudes acquired increasingly familiar shapes. Yet this was also a period of ferment in which unrest associated with the global age of revolutions (including a dynamic transatlantic opposition movement) collided with often inchoate assemblages of parties and constituencies. As writers adopted increasingly emphatic removes from the political arena and cultivated familiar stances of cynicism, detachment, and retreat, their estrangement also promised to loop back into political engagement-and to make their works 'parties' all their own. Cover 1 Disaffected Parties: Political Estrangement and the Making of English Literature, 1760–1830 4 Copyright 5 Preface 6 Acknowledgements 14 Contents 18 List of Figures 20 Introduction: Sick of Politics 22 DISAFFECTION, POLITICS, LITERATURE 30 INSTABILITY, CRISIS, REVOLUTION 37 LITERATURE ON THE SHORES OF POLITICS 44 LITERARY FORM AND THE MAKING OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 52 THE ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK 57 1: Disaffected Parties, 1688–1832 65 ‘POLITICKS’! 1688 AND THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL ESTRANGEMENT 71 SATIRE AND CYNICISM: FROM THE MAKING OF SWIFT TO THE FALL OF WALPOLE (1714–42) 77 ‘ALL THE DIFFERENT PARTIES ELECTRIFIED’: STRUCTURES OF POLITICAL FEELING AT THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE I I I 82 THEATRICAL INTERLUDE: A WORD TO THE WISE (1770) 91 POLITICAL SCIENCE, PUBLIC FEELINGS: GOVERNANCE IN EGERIA (1802–3) 99 2: Tristram Shandy and the Divided Worlds of Politics 109 ‘MY PEN I ’VE SPLINTER’D QUITE’: STERNE AND THE POLITICS OF PARTY 113 TAKING SIDES: LAUNCHING TRISTRAM SHANDY 122 ‘HEARTY LAUGHING SUBJECTS’? CONSIDERING SHANDEISM 127 ‘UTOPIA! WHERE THE DEVIL’S THAT?’ 132 ‘HEARTY LAUGHING (POLITICAL) SUBJECTS’? SHANDEISM RECONSIDERED 139 3: Literary Leviathans: Johnson, Boswell, and the 1790s 144 THE PROBLEM OF AUTHORITYIN THE JOHNSON CIRCLE 149 JOHNSON’S ERRATIC TORYISM 156 LEVIATHAN IN THE 1790S: WILD DEMOCRATS AND WAYWARD PREROGATIVES 162 BOSWELL’S ‘WARM’ TORYISM 166 THE LITERARY LEVIATHAN? WRANGLING THE LIFE OF JOHNSON 171 4: Burke, Edgeworth, and Ireland’s Discontents 177 WOMEN, POLITICS, AND THE NOVEL 181 IRELAND’S DISCONTENTS 188 BURKE’S PARTIES 197 ABSENT FRIENDS: ‘MAJESTIC’ POLITICIANS AND ‘WRETCHED TENANTS’ 202 PARTIAL SPECTATORS IN THE ABSENTEE 207 5: Austen and the Cultural Logic of Late Toryism 218 ‘THE SCEPTER, NOW TRANSFERR’D’: POWER AND PREROGATIVE REVISITED 222 WILLIAM PITT AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FEELING TORY 226 MASTERS AND SERVANTS: THE PROBLEM OF AUTHORITY IN MANSFIELD PARK 230 ‘HE MUST NOT HEAD MOBS’: NATIONAL ORDER AND THE NOVEL 237 AUSTEN’S WILFUL HEROINES 241 6: Byron’s Opposition 250 THE SHADOW OF OPPOSITION: BYRON AND THE ‘DEVIL’S PARTY’ 254 BYRONIC, IRONIC, DISAFFECTED 261 UNSHACKLED JUNIUS 269 BYRON’S CYNICISM 275 THE TRUTH IN POLITICS 281 Conclusion 285 Works Cited 296 ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPTS 296 PUBLISHED MATERIAL 296 Index 312 "Disaffected Parties reveals how alienation from politics effected crucial changes to the shape and status of literary form. Recovering the earliest expressions of grumbling, irritability, and cynicism towards politics, this study asks how unsettled partisan legacies converged with more recent discontents to forge a seminal period in the making of English literature, and thereby poses wide-ranging questions about the lines between politics and aesthetics.0Reading works including Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, the novels of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and the satirical poetry of Lord Byron in tandem with print culture and partisan activity, this book shows how these writings remained animated by disaffected impulses and recalcitrant energies at odds with available party positions and emerging governmental norms-even as they sought to imagine perspectives that looked beyond the divided political world altogether.0'No one can be more sick of-or indifferent to politics than I am' Lord Byron wrote in 1820. Between the later eighteenth century and the Romantic age, disaffected political attitudes acquired increasingly familiar shapes. Yet this was also a period of ferment in which unrest associated with the global age of revolutions (including a dynamic transatlantic opposition movement) collided with often inchoate assemblages of parties and constituencies. As writers adopted increasingly emphatic removes0from the political arena and cultivated familiar stances of cynicism, detachment, and retreat, their estrangement also promised to loop back into political engagement-and to make their works 'parties' all their own"--Backcover Disaffected Parties reveals how alienation from politics effected crucial changes to the shape and status of literary form. Recovering the earliest expressions of grumbling, irritability, and cynicism towards politics, this study asks how unsettled partisan legacies converged with more recent discontents to forge a seminal period in the making of English literature, and thereby poses wide-ranging questions about the lines between politics and aesthetics.0Reading works including Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, the novels of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and the satirical poetry of Lord Byron in tandem with print culture and partisan activity, this book shows how these writings remained animated by disaffected impulses and recalcitrant energies at odds with available party positions and emerging governmental norms-even as they sought to imagine perspectives that looked beyond the divided political world altogether. 'No one can be more sick of-or indifferent to politics than I am' Lord Byron wrote in 1820. Between the later eighteenth century and the Romantic age, disaffected political attitudes acquired increasingly familiar shapes. Yet this was also a period of ferment in which unrest associated with the global age of revolutions (including a dynamic transatlantic opposition movement) collided with often inchoate assemblages of parties and constituencies. As writers adopted increasingly emphatic removes0from the political arena and cultivated familiar stances of cynicism, detachment, and retreat, their estrangement also promised to loop back into political engagement-and to make their works 'parties' all their own A study of English literary culture in the period between 1760 and 1830 which explores signs of modern disenchanted attitudes towards politics.