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The New Atalantis (full title: Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of both Sexes, From The New Atalantis) was an influential political satire by Delarivier Manley published at the start of the 18th century. In it a parallel is drawn between exploitation of females and political deception of the public.
The New Atalantis appeared in 1709, the first volume in May and the second in October. The novel was initially suppressed on the grounds of its scandalous nature and Manley was arrested and tried, but it was immediately popular and went into seven editions over the following decade. As a political satire on the behaviour of prominent members of the Whig party, it won the approval of the Tory literary faction, among them Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Richard Steele and Jonathan Swift. There is also a reference to its enduring popularity in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (Canto III.165).
In the immediate background, and influencing the choice of title, was Sir Francis Bacon's novel New Atlantis (1627). In contrast to its altruistic utopianism, Manley reveals a hypocritical dystopia. There was also Thomas Heyrick's long verse satire, The New Atlantis (1687), attacking the defence of Catholicism as espoused by the Tory Party during the Stuart succession crisis of a previous reign. In this case the show of virtue by their Whig opponents is revealed as a sham.
But the work also played its part in the attack on the current political favourite of the Whigs, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, whose wife Sarah was an influential attendant on Queen Anne. Sarah had already served as the target of Manley's earlier satire, The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians (1705). Now The New Atalantis was timed to embarrass the Whig party in the coming parliamentary session and was to help the Tories into power in 1710. [1] The relationship between the queen and Sarah Churchill was damaged as a result.
The story concerns the return to earth of the goddess of Justice, Astrea, to gather the information about private and public behaviour necessary for the proper moral education of a prince in her charge. Astrea encounters her mother Virtue, dressed in rags and little regarded, and the two benefit from their power of invisibility to make their observations, guided by the earthy Lady Intelligence. Together they encounter a succession of scenes displaying public and personal corruption, broken lives, ruined virgins, orgies, seductions, and rapes. The narrative employs the framing device of a conversation between the three allegorical female narrators, who observe, report and reflect upon the patterns of life on the remote Mediterranean island which is the scene of their investigations. [2]
The reader's sexual titillation is assisted by the amassing of sensual details in an atmosphere of luxurious accessories, perfumed in the sub-tropical heat, as in the description of the bedroom of Germanicus. Through the windows the scent of jasmine "blew in with a gentle fragrancy. Tuberoses set in pretty gilt and china pots were placed advantageously upon stands; the curtains of the bed drawn back to the canopy, made of yellow velvet, embroidered with white bugles the panels of the chamber looking-glass. Upon the bed were strewed, with a lavish profuseness, plenty of orange and lemon flowers. And to complete the scene, the young Germanicus in a dress and posture not very decent to describe" beguiled the sight of the Duchess who enters and joins him on the bed.
A feminist critic observes that one aspect of the satire addresses the invisibility of women in the masculine world of politics and their consequent ability to influence situations through the power of gossip. The author is thus commenting on her own procedures in order to underline the points she makes. A parallel is also implied in the novel between seduction of the helpless in the sexual arena and deception of the public in the political sphere. Feminine marginalisation is made the image of the general public's political marginalisation. [3]
Supposed details of the author's personal history appeared integrated in the Atalantic world with the story of "Delia" in Volume two, and this was followed up by her autobiographical Adventures of Rivella (1714). Two volumes published in 1710, The Memoirs of Europe, were (in the early 18th century) often referred to as volumes three and four of the Atalantis, although they did not share the fictional setting.
Henry Fielding was an English writer and magistrate known for the use of humour and satire in his works. His 1749 comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling was a seminal work in the genre. Along with Samuel Richardson, Fielding is seen as the founder of the traditional English novel. He also played an important role in the history of law enforcement in the United Kingdom, using his authority as a magistrate to found the Bow Street Runners, London's first professional police force.
The Whigs were a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs became the Liberal Party when it merged with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. Many Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 over the issue of Irish Home Rule to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Conservative Party in 1912.
Aphra Behn was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. Behn wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, Behn declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after.
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Princess of Mindelheim, Countess of Nellenburg, was an English courtier who rose to be one of the most influential women of her time through her close relationship with Anne, Queen of Great Britain. The Duchess of Marlborough's relationship and influence with Anne were widely known, and leading public figures often turned their attentions to her, hoping for favour from Anne.
Events from the year 1714 in literature.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1709.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed his exclusion because of their belief that inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
Susanna Centlivre, born Susanna Freeman, and also known professionally as Susanna Carroll, was an English poet, actress, and "the most successful female playwright of the eighteenth century". Centlivre's "pieces continued to be acted after the theatre managers had forgotten most of her contemporaries." During a long career at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she became known as the second woman of the English stage, after Aphra Behn.
Charles Gildon, was an English hack writer and translator. He produced biographies, essays, plays, poetry, fictional letters, fables, short stories, and criticism. He is remembered best as a target of Alexander Pope in Pope's Dunciad and his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot and as an enemy of Jonathan Swift. Due to Pope's caricature of Gildon as well as the volume and rapidity of his writings, Gildon has become the epitome of the hired pen and literary opportunist.
Whiggism or Whiggery is a political philosophy that grew out of the Parliamentarian faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651) and was concretely formulated by Lord Shaftesbury during the Stuart Restoration. The Whigs advocated the supremacy of Parliament, government centralization, and coercive Anglicisation through the educational system. They also staunchly opposed granting freedom of religion, civil rights, or voting rights to anyone who worshipped outside of the Established Churches of the realm. Eventually, the Whigs grudgingly conceded strictly limited religious toleration for Protestant dissenters, while continuing the religious persecution and disenfranchisement of Roman Catholics and Scottish Episcopalians. They were particularly determined to prevent the ascension of a Catholic heir presumptive to the British throne, especially of James II or his legitimate male descendants and instead granted the throne to the Protestant House of Hanover in 1714. Whig ideology is associated with early conservative liberalism.
Augustan literature is a style of British literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II in the first half of the 18th century and ending in the 1740s, with the deaths of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, in 1744 and 1745, respectively. It was a literary epoch that featured the rapid development of the novel, an explosion in satire, the mutation of drama from political satire into melodrama and an evolution toward poetry of personal exploration. In philosophy, it was an age increasingly dominated by empiricism, while in the writings of political economy, it marked the evolution of mercantilism as a formal philosophy, the development of capitalism and the triumph of trade.
Delarivier "Delia" Manley was an English author, playwright, and political pamphleteer. Manley is sometimes referred to, with Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood, as one of "the fair triumvirate of wit", which is a later attribution.
Sarah, Lady Piers was an English literary patron, political commentator, and a poet.
Sarah Fyge Egerton (1668–1723) was an English poet who wrote in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In her works The Female Advocate and Poems on Several Occasions, Egerton wrote about gender, friendship, marriage, religion, education, politics, and other topics. She is chiefly known as the spirited teen who responded in defense of women to Robert Gould's misogynist satire.
Events from the year 1709 in Great Britain.
New Atlantis is a novel by Sir Francis Bacon.
Mary Montagu, Duchess of Montagu, formerly Lady Mary Churchill, was a British court official and noble, the wife of John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu. She was the youngest surviving daughter of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and his wife, Sarah Jenyns.
John Morphew was an English publisher. He was associated with significant literary and political publications of the early 18th century. At one point publishing for both Whig and Tory factions, he later became identified with the Tories.
The Adventures of Rivella (1714) is the last novel written by eighteenth century English author Delarivier Manley. The work is a semi-autobiographical account of Manley's life seen through the fictional character of Rivella. Delarivier Manley's final novel, which was later edited and published by Edmund Curll, is centred around her life before, during, and after her treacherous marriage. The events and incidents incurred by the fictional character Rivella are narrated to the reader through a conversational dialogue between two male protagonists, being Sir Lovemore and Sir D'Aumont. The narrative tells that the young chevalier D'Aumont has left France in search of sexual partnership with Rivella and instead finds the rejected lover, Sir Charles Lovemore who does not assist the Frenchman in arranging contact with Rivella, but tells her life story instead, both as it relates in public gossip and her personal writings.
Rosalind Ballaster is a scholar of 18th-century literature and a specialist in Georgian theatre. A Professor at Mansfield College, Oxford, she is a winner of the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for 2006.