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Preciosité Crosses the Atlantic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Thomas P. Haviland
Thomas P. Haviland*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

The indebtedness of our earliest American fiction to old world models has been made plain on numerous occasions. The Power of Sympathy, commonly regarded as our first novel, and the works which immediately followed, obviously owe much to Samuel Richardson; our earliest professional novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, has been branded at once a disciple of Godwin—his Arthur Mervyn a lineal descendent of Caleb Williams—and a member of the Gothic School. Sterne's name, and the influence of his Shandean sensibility this side the water, have been bruited about. Yet, so far, one immediate and important source, the French Heroic Romance—those great folios of Scudéry, Gomberville, La Calprenède, and their compeers, translated, imitated, and avidly read in the mother country—has been almost totally overlooked.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , March 1944 , pp. 131 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944

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References

Note 1 in page 131 This brief statement may be best implemented by consideration of Professor Howard M. Jones' America and French Culture, 1750–1848, Chapel Hill, 1927.

Note 2 in page 131 See H. M. Jones, “The Importation of French Literature in New York City, 1750–1800,” Studies in Philol. xxviii (Oct. 1931).

Note 3 in page 131 Op. cit., p. 173 ff.

Note 4 in page 131 “Awakening Truth Tending to Conversion” (Boston, 1710), in Miller and Johnson, The Puritans (New York, 1938), p. 339. It should be remarked that the term Romance at this period was pretty generally restricted, referring, not to the mediaeval type, nor yet to those slender little volumes by such literary ladies as Aphra Behn, but to the Heroic variety—those “twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt” on which the gay Lord Petre raised an altar for his sacrifice to love.

Note 5 in page 132 The Power of Sympathy, W. H. Brown (1789), ed. Milton Ellis (New York, 1937), i, 50.

Note 6 in page 132 Catalogue of 1790.

Note 7 in page 132 H. M. Jones, op. cit., p. 28.

Note 8 in page 132 L. G. Tyler, and Ed. James, “Libraries in Colonial Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly Hist. Mag., iii, 179.

Note 9 in page 132 Tyler, op. cit., ii, 174.

Note 10 in page 132 Cassandra, also by Calprenède. Tyler, op. cit., viii, 18–19.

Note 11 in page 133 Jones (quoting Fay), op. cit., p. 187. The List of Caritat's subscription library offers over 200 novels in French. It must be admitted there are none of our romances here, but the comparatively late date of the catalogue, 1804, would serve to explain this.

Note 12 in page 133 Wharton, A. H., Salons Colonial and Republican. (Philadelphia, 1900), p. 132.

Note 13 in page 133 Unfortunately no handy inventory exists of the libraries of these folk or their contemporaries. The Catalogue of “The Library Co. of Phila.,” despite Franklin's predilection for the practical and the classical, still admits a volume by Scudéry.

Note 14 in page 133 Op. cit., p. 195.

Note 15 in page 1333 Dunlap, William, Life of Brown (Philadelphia, 1815), ii, 131.

Note 16 in page 134 For a more complete discussion, see the writer's The Roman de Longue Haleine on English Soil (U. of P. thesis, 1931).

Note 17 in page 134 “Essay on Romance,” Miscel. Prose Works, vi, 215.

Note 18 in page 134 Preface to “Fables,” in Works of John Dryden (Edinburgh, 1882), xi, 232.

Note 19 in page 135 The Grand Cyrus, pt. X, Bk. 3, p. 199.

Note 20 in page 135 Clelia, An Excellent New Romance. . . , Madeleine de Scudéry (London, 1656–61), p. 43.

Note 21 in page 135 J. Crowne, Pandion and Amphigenia (1683), p. 12.

Note 22 in page 135 Cleopatra or Hymen's Praeludia, Pt. ix, Bk. i, V. 2, pp. 139–140.

Note 23 in page 136 The American Novel (New York, 1940), p. 5.

Note 24 in page 136 i, 28 ff. The reader is again reminded of the necessity of condensation, and referred to The Roman de Longue Haleine on English Soil for purposes of comparison.

Note 25 in page 137 Ibid., p. 51.

Note 26 in page 137 Ibid., i, 124.

Note 27 in page 137 Ibid., ii, 39 ff.

Note 28 in page 137 Ibid., i, 101–102, or any of a hundred similar examples.

Note 29 in page 137 Ibid., i, 73.

Note 30 in page 137 Cf. i, 55–58, on whether to read Rochefoucault, etc.

Note 31 in page 137 ii, 78–79.

Note 32 in page 138 Ibid, ii, 44 ff.

Note 33 in page 138 Typical are Altamont and Arabella, The History of Miranda and Cleander etc., in which the pages of The Columbian Magazine abound; also, such little volumes as The Fortunate Discovery, or the History of Henry Villars (1798) and Moreland Vale or the Fair Fugitive (1801), both by “A Young Lady of the State of New York.“

Note 34 in page 138 Life of Brown (Philadelphia, 1815), i, 55.

Note 35 in page 138 Ibid., ii, 389. The characters named are actually from Calprenède's Cassandra. Should the reader infer from this correction Brown's hearsay knowledge rather than a perfectly natural confusion of the numerous personages of these romances, he is asked to withhold judgment until further evidence has been adduced. Incidentally, Cloria Neville, whom Calvert rescues from her burning home, gets her given name from the popular romance already several times mentioned.

Note 36 in page 139 Ormond, ed. E. Marchand (New York, 1937), p. 98.

Note 37 in page 139 Ibid., p. 63.

Note 38 in page 139 Op. cit., pp. 7 and 8.

Note 39 in page 139 Arthur Mervyn (Philadelphia, 1887), ii, 179.

Note 40 in page 140 Ibid., i, 153. The Romances constantly open their “histories” according to this formula.

Note 41 in page 140 Ibid., i, 187.

Note 42 in page 140 Ibidi., i, 197.

Note 43 in page 140 Ibid., i, 208.

Note 44 in page 141 Ibid., i, 208. The writer would not, however, deny the claim of English Heroic Drama as a further source of such extravagant diction.

Note 45 in page 141 Ibid., i, 196.

Note 46 in page 141 Ibid., ii, 180–184.

Note 47 in page 141 The writer has accepted the identification offered by Milton Ellis, yet finds the wide divergence of style in the two books extremely difficult to account for.