This thesis examines the idea of progress in
Peacock's "novels of talk," primarily against the intellectual
background of the early nineteenth century. Although
much of it is concerned with elucidating specific
sources and probable general influences, my aim throughout
has been to show how these sources and influences operate
in the novels. As Peacock is a highly eclectic writer,
critics have found it difficult to disentangle his own
views from the many others put forward in his fiction.
By examining Peacock's treatment of what was perhaps the
most widely diffused and variously applied idea of his
century, I attempt to find grounds for reconciliation of
the many seemingly opposed views on this idea presented
in the five novels of talk.
Using Peacock's "Four Ages of Poetry" as a startingpoint,
I suggest in my introduction that Peacock's early
transition from poetry to satire had an historical premise,
rooted as it was in an eighteenth-century intellectual
tradition which viewed man's progress from a savage to a
civilized state as an advance from "rude" passion to urbane
reason. Hence comedy and satire became for Peacock
the only feasible literary forms in a "polished" age.
Turning to Peacock's fiction, I devote a chapter to each of the five novels of talk, in which I examine Peacock's
treatment of such concepts as perfectibility,
reform, primitivism, political economy, millenarianism
and so on, all concerns of Peacock's age, and all in some
way bearing on the notion of progress. Against this broad
background I analyse the narrative level of the fiction
and attempt to show how it illustrates practically the
ideas set forth on the level of discourse. My conclusion,
essentially, is that Peacock professes an optimism
tempered by informed scepticism. Peacock is convinced,
to quote from Headlong Hall, that "an amelioration in
the state of the sensitive man" is eminently possible.
While he is less optimistic about society at large, some
few rays of hope are evident in the tentative syntheses
of opinion and theory which he effects on the level of
discourse in the novels. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/15524 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Mulvihill, James |
| Contributors | Coldwell, James, English |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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