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... devised was to convince man that he can take his time. This was just the lie that resulted in the birth of the novel genre in Latin countries (Boccaccio, Le Sage, Cervantes) and its refinement in England (Defoe, Richardson). It needs to be added, though, that a number of more or less faithful Christians also tended to fall prey to this three hundred year- old vogue. The pinnacle of their output - serious, thoughtful, focused novels on strictly Biblical themes - can be classified as secondary prose narration as opposed to the primary narration of the Bible itself and the irrelevant third rate narration of entirely stoicheia-induced novel literature. IV.
The purpose of this part is to leave the grounds of generalization for the sake of specifics. We shall examine some of the specimens of the aforementioned English refinement 'movement' of the 18 th century, meaning some of the novels that are deemed evergreen classics for long, and see if at least some of them qualify for our criteria of secondary prose narration. The 'Augustan' era, the time and place is crucial in the development of the genre. We shall focus on the accomplishment, positive or negative, of Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift and Samuel Richardson.
First we need to take a glance at the social and cultural context in which their novels were born. The social setting of this period is an especially unflattering one when it comes to evaluation from our point of view. Although stoicheia was always predominant in the history of mankind, in 18 th century England it conquered new areas when compared to earlier phases -- the religious-superstitious medieval times, the heroic Elizabethan era or the still theology-centered Restoration. The Augustan period is synonymous in the public conscience with shallowness, snobbery, 'polite conversation', and most importantly, with being the roots of modern materialism, the origins of industrialism, an 'age of prose and reason' 6. This is all quite sad but what concerns us here is the state of religious life. It comes as no big surprise that in accordance with the secular phenomena of the era, the visible Church and the faith in God of English people in general both entered a phase of deterioration following the Restoration.
England in the 1700 's began a tragic process of turning from God to man, perfecting a host of scientific branches and cultural devices that had no relation to the Divine. The fact that this unholy process led to the birth of the middle class which in turn led to the prosperity of the British novel thanks to a growing and lazy reading base already speaks volumes on the probable moral-theological value of the novel output. We shall now turn directly to Defoe and his train of thought in the popular Applebee's Journal (1725): "Writing, you know, Mr Applebee, is become a very considerable Branch of the English Commerce... The Booksellers are the Master Manufacturers or Employers.
The several Writers, Authors, Covers, Sub-writers, and all other Operators with pen and Ink are the workmen employed by the said Master Manufacturers. " 7 According to the father of British novel, his genre of choice is a tame product of commerce in an oppressive machinery. In the semi-autobiographical Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe he states: "This supplying a story by invention is certainly a most scandalous crime, and yet very little regarded in that part. It is a sort of lying that makes a great hole in the heart, at which by degrees a habit of lying enters in. " 8 This statement needs even less comment. He had taken up the godless profession of novel-writing out of pressure of his circumstances, financial and social. Our interest in him in this essay is based on the fact that he was one of Christian upbringing and his apparent aim in his first novel, Robinson Crusoe, was to take Cervantes' genre and try to apply it to sacred means; we shall examine if he managed to create an example of the secondary narration. Robinson Crusoe was supposed to be a parable on the way a once loyal believer becomes entangled in mundane affairs - he becomes a wealthy merchant - that eventually entrap him (he wrecks his ship) but is finally saved by the grace of the Lord - the end of the novel.
Since the subject is entirely secular to begin with, the conditions for our criteria are not given a chance. Furthermore, Defoe himself becomes mundanely entangled during the course of writing: his complicating of things with circumstantial physical details is far from good Christian writing. An even more serious objection is that an undercurrent of non-religious values pervades every page: we see Crusoe rewarded by life for his sins; it is told that he was born into "the middle station of low life" 9 only to emerge later as a rich slave trader by untold suspicious means. Also, Crusoe's acts manifested in the novel are less than Christan-like: he decides to sell the Moorish boy who saved his life for sixty silvers; later, he seems to treat Friday in a condescending, unequal manner that Defoe does not condemn.
We may now argue that Robinson turned out to be Defoe's sub-conscious celebration of stoicheia that found a new ally in England's Augustan tendencies. The novel, then, is to be written off as third rate and harmful. We now promptly turn to Moll Flanders which is regarded as the author's best novel. Sadly, the moral bankruptcy of this prototype of the British social novel is even less debatable. Centering on a basically amoral woman, it tells the long-winded story of how almost all the characters in her life adored and admired her while she kept treating them with dishonesty and abandon. The neglect ment of Moll's blood children by both her and the author is beyond words and gives reason enough in itself to classify the book as base literature.
In the end, Moll's stolen goods formed the basis of her wealth and harmony. Jonathan Swift was picked also based on his well-documented affiliation with Christianity and his attempt to create a decidedly sublime theological satire in Gulliver's Travels. Deemed by critics as one of the key Augustan novels, the first books are regarded as less controversial and less serious than the last one on which we are focusing. The first books, in fact, are peripheral in their lengthy examination and caricature of human affairs, and are not fit to Christian consideration.
The last book presents the land of the Houyhnhms and the caveman-like Yahoos, and - isolated from the rest of the novel - almost makes it as secondary narration. The problem, again, is the substitution of Biblical imagery with complete fiction. As a blameless Irish clergyman, Swift is less suspect of being a covert advocate of stoicheia than Defoe; he fought his daily battles with his pre-industrial environment, a war reflected most notably in this last book of his novel. His faith seems to be strong, which is one thing. His Gulliver, even at its best, does not relate directly to the Scripture, which is another thing, equally as important. He made up an imaginary world instead which has much to say to the unwitting secular individual, but still comes off as a misapplication of his faith.
It is the final deduction that makes this last book slightly noteworthy: Swift argues that man has the likeness of Yahoos due to the original sin and he needs the Christian miracle to escape his beast-like identity. In the process, he must avoid becoming the likeness of the Houyhnhms who represent the lifeless, logic- and reason-based reality of the Augustan era. Samuel Richardson easily surpasses the previous two in psychological depth and character forming, but also reaches new lows in hypocrisy and exploitation. As D. H. Lawrence remarks, "Boccaccio at his hottest seems to me less pornographic al than Pamela or Clarissa Harlowe. " 10 We include Richardson because it is inevitable in any discussion of the 18 th century novel.
His Pamela is a prime example of the lengthy third rate narration type. It sets up the theme of 'virtue rewarded', then lingers endlessly on episodes of thin-veiled pornography as a landlord goes on and on in his attempts to seduce a young maiden "whose dreams are filled with ideas of rape, but whose waking moments resound to prate about her honour" 11. Pamela is hailed to this day as the first truly complex psychological novel, which is a praise irrelevant to our system of values, as being complex and analytical makes no sense in case of the exclusion of the Divine. In Clarissa Harlowe, this kind of hurtful secular complexity is taken even further, to the point of sickly obsession, with the whole tumult ending with the death of the protagonist. V.
The examination could go on for several pages, from Fielding's Joseph Andrews to Smollett's Humphrey Clinker, but the point is made clear: the novel genre in general, including its 17 th century South-European forefathers and its 18 th century British pioneers, is of secondary value at best when it comes to the all-essential questions of life. These questions are fully covered in the one book that embodies the category of 'primary narration'. Any subsequent specimens of epic prose narration are potentially damaging or at least irrelevant (which, in this context, also qualifies as harmful). Unfortunately, the masses advocating and fervently reading the ocean of secular novels - which are in no case second, but third rate material - are the equivalents of the lost wanderers in Simone Weil's labyrinth, or the oblivious bricks in the wall in our other analogy.
The thick fabric of hexing stoicheia might never grow thin for them. References: Disciple-Nations: web Ford, Boris, ed. : The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 4 (Penguin, London, 1973) New International Version Bible (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1990) Ruiz, Federico: Bevezetes Keresztes Set Janos tanita saba (Plug, Eisenstadt, 1987) Weil, Simone: Ami szemelyes, es ami set (Virginia, Budapest, 1983)
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Research essay sample on 18 Th Century Robinson Crusoe
