Amatory Fiction

http://www.fabricattic.com/Masks%20T0511290.jpg

•“While he thinks to fool me, [he] is himself the only beguiled Person.” Fantomina

http://www.art-connection.de/masken/page/english/venezian.carnival.2.html

Amatory Fiction•Fictions of erotic intrigue;

focused on love, usually sexual love; secular

•Popular in Britain in the late 17th and early 18th centuries

• Influenced by Continental Romance tradition, and French scandal fiction

•Often written by women; popular with women

•Often political

•Precursor to the novel

•Ancestor to Romance novels, “Bodice-Rippers”, etc.

http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/images/romance.jpg

• “The early eighteenth century, then, saw a split between female-authored pious and didactic love fiction, stressing the virues of chastity or sentimental marriage, and erotic fiction by women, with its voyeuristic attention to the combined pleasures and ravages of seduction” (Ros Ballaster, Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 199233).

Aphra Behn•1640–1689

•many biographical details unclear

•A prolific writer in many genres

•The “Incomparable Astrea”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphra_Behn

•“The Fair Triumvirate of Wit”

•difficult life: worked hard and died in poverty

•critics have not been kind

http://www.maskitalia.com/massimo.htm

Anonymous Lampoon, 1687[possibly by Robert Gould]

Doth that lewd Harlot, that Poetick Quean,Fam’d through White Fryars, you know who I mean,Mend for reproof, others set up in spight,To flux, takes glisters, vomits, purge and write,Long with a sciatica she’s beside lame,Her limbs distortur’d, Nerves shrunk up with pain,And therefore I’ll all sharp reflections shun,Poverty, Poetry, Pox, are plagues enough for one.

quoted by George Woodcock, in Aphra Behn: the English Sappho (1989)

from Behn, “To Lysander, on some Verses he writ, and asking more for his Heart than ’twas worth,” 1684

Be just, my lovely swain, and do not takeFreedoms you’ll not to me allow;Or give Amynta so much freedom backThat she may rove as well as you.

Let us then love upon the honest square,Since interest neither have designed,For the sly gamester, who ne’er plays me fair,Must trick for trick expect to find.

from Behn, Epilogue, Sir Patient Fancy, 1678

What has poor Woman done, that she must beDebar’d from Sense and sacred Poetry?Why in this Age has Heaven allow’d no more,And Women less of Wit than heretofore?..........................................

Method, and Rule—you only understand;Pursue that way of Fooling, and be damn’d.Your learned Cant of Action, Time and Place,Must all give way to the unlabour’d Farce.

The modest Muse a veil with pity throwsO’er Vice’s friends and Virtue’s female foes;Abash’d the views the bold unblushing mienOf modern Manley, Centlivre, and Behn;And grieves to see One nobly born disgraceHer modest sex, and her illustrious race.Tho’ harmony thro’ all their numbers flow’d,And genuine wit its ev’ry grace bestow’d,Nor genuine wit nor harmony excuseThe dang’rous fallies of a wanton Muse:Nor can such tuneful, but immoral lays,Expect the trubute of impartial praise...

from John Duncombe, The Feminiad, 1754 (ll. 139-150)

“Sappho famous for her gout and guilt,” “debauch’d and vile”[Sappho=Behn]

Robert Gould,“The Playhouse,” Collected Poems, 1689

Once, to your Shame, your Parts to all were shown,

But now, (tho’ a more Public Woman grown,)

You gain more Reputation in the Town;Grow Public, to your Honour, not your

Shame,As more Men now you please, gain much

more Fame;Who, for your Parts, got much more

Praise before,But, as your Pains, in bringing forth,

were more;But now, more credit you from all Men

gain,As you bring forth, in Public, with less

Pain,Your easiest Off-springs of your Wanton

Brain...

William Wycherley, “To the Sappho of the Age. Suppos’d to Ly-In of a Love-Distemper, or a Play,” Miscellany Poems, 1704

...when their verse did failTo get ’em Brandy, Bread and

Chease and Ale,Their wants by Prostitution were

supply’d,Shew but a Tester, you might up

and ride:For punk* and Poetess agree so pat[punk=prostitute]You cannot well be This, and not be

That.

Robert Gould, “The Poetess, A Satyr,” The Works of Mr. Robert Gould, 1709

The stage how loosely does Astrea tread, 11

Who fairly puts all characters to bed!

Alexander Pope, “The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated,” 1737

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she—shady and amorous as she was—who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits.Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1928

Eliza Haywood

•1693–1756

•many biographical details unclear

•Long career; a prolific writer in many genres

•The “Great Arbitress of Passion”

http://www.unbsj.ca/arts/english/jones/mt/images/eliza.gif

•A “Shameless Scribbler” (Alexander Pope)

•From scandalous to decorous

http://www.maskitalia.com/massimo.htm

•Frontispiece to The Female Spectator, a periodical for women edited by Haywood.

Masquerade

•European tradition of Carnival: festivals of liberating anonymity when the sexes, and social classes, mixed with relative freedom

•Venetian Carnival the most famous

http://www.ellencline.com/theatre.html

• 17th couple in carnival masks

F.Bertelli: "Magnifico e Cortigiana" - (1642)

http://www.delpiano.com/carnival/html/magnifico.html

• Moretta (mask worn by women, secured with a button held between the teeth)

G.Grevembroch: "Mascara" - (18th century)

http://www.delpiano.com/carnival/html/moretta.html

• Group of masked men and women, late 18thc

http://www.delpiano.com/carnival/html/games.html

G.DePian: highlights from C.Goldoni's play "Le Donne Gelose" - (1791)

• Contemporary photos of masked women at the Venetian Carnival

http://www.delpiano.com/carnival/html/gallery.html

http://www.delpiano.com/carnival/html/gallery.html

http://www.delpiano.com/carnival/html/gallery.html

http://www.aurumxxl.com/carnival_2.htm

• Casanova (2005)

Masks

•Women often went to the theatre masked

•Masks in the theatre were associated with prostitutes and courtesans

http://www.unitedmaskandparty.com/Masks/images/feather_mask_t09.JPG

• Masked woman and man in period costume

http://www.meetingeurope.com/costumes/files/18_century_costume_2.htm

To consider:• Is Fantomina in

charge of her own destiny?

•Does the story present a radical view of relations between women and men?

•How can we interpret the ending?

http://www.maskitalia.com/lucia.htm

Delarivier Manley

• 1670c – 1724

To consider:

•M.M. Bakhtin wrote about “dialogized alien voices” in narrative prose; do we see any here?

http://www.maskitalia.com/lucia.htm

•“The struggle for control over the identification and interpretation of amatory signs between male and female protagonists which is enacted on the level of content can be taken as a metaphorical substitution for the struggle for epistemological authority between male and female readers and writers on the level of form” (24). Ros Ballaster

http://worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_novels/