Eighteenth-century Literature

Prof. Dr. Sorana Corneanu

Maria-Cristina Stanciu
1-st Year English Major
Group 5

June 2009

The Function of the 18-th Century Travelling:

A Source of Musing or of Entertainment?

In Watt’s view, the novel attempts to portray all varieties of the human
experience, and note merely those suited to one particular literary perspective, moreover,
its protagonists are presented not as types, but as particular individuals in the
contemporary social environment1. The aim of my essay is to present the functions of that
experience, in my case, the 18-th century travelling, in the English novels “Robinson
Crusoe”(1719) by Daniel Defoe and “Gulliver’s Travels”(1726) by Jonathan Swift,
especially by regarding the Foucauldian view2, which claims that the novel participates
in the increasing regulation and disciplining of personality and consciousness.
To begin with, both novels have as a core feature, the travel, and both
protagonists, Robinson Crusoe and Lemuel Gulliver, travel with a certain purpose: the
first is in his years of adolescence and feels emancipated, wanting to go on sea voyages,
by neglecting his father’s desire to become a lawyer; and the second is a surgeon, and in
order to assure his family’s wealth, has to take different voyages to the sea. What the two
protagonists’ stories have in common, among other things, is that both imply a
shipwreck: while Robinson Crusoe arrives on a remote island, Gulliver goes on four

1
Kroll, Richard, “Introduction“ to The English Novel, Vol. I: 1700 to Fielding, ed. Richard Kroll,
Longman, 1998, page 2, cited from Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and
Fielding (1957).
2
Idem., page 15, The ideology of the eighteenth-century novel: Bender, Castle, and Kay.

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separate voyages, remaining the only survivor of the shipwrecks and becomes for the four
peoples he meets, a being that produces amazement.
The didactic function of the travel novels
Hunter3 admits that all of Defoe’s major characters preach to us, and so does
Defoe himself in his own voice, sometimes in counterpoint. […] he wants to affect his
society, even straighten it out. Often, this function is associated with the idea of life as a
journey and the providential design4: for example, Crusoe’s misfortune begins
immediately after he runs away with a friend, without receiving his parents’ permission
in this case Crusoe is associated with the Prodigal Son5 or to the spiritual pilgrim6.
Moreover, he often contemplates what it would have been like had he never wandered,
had he not been saved from the shipwreck, or had the ship sunk with all its provisions,
this making him become closer to God and to His teachings.
Regarding “Gulliver’s Travels”, “when the narrator tells the details of the ways of
living of a certain society, Swift satirizes something wrong with the English society” 7, but
at the same time this is a didactic presentation of historical events: for example, in
Lilliput – 1. “by describing a society that chooses its highest officials with silly
competitions like seeing who can jump the highest on a tight-rope, Swift is poking fun at
the way officials are chosen in England” 8; 2. “the war between the English and the
French is parodied in the conflict between the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudians. Their
conflict over which end of the egg to break reflects the centuries-old conflict over how to
practice religion- as Protestants or as Catholics (In Swifts eyes, fighting over religion is
as pointless as fighting over which end of the egg to break.)”9; 3. “Swift also parodies the
political parties within England. The Tory party is represented by the Low Heels while
the Whigs are represented by the High Heels. Considering that Swift himself changed

3
Hunter, Paul, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction, New York :
W.W. Norton, 1990, page 55.
4
Paulson, Ronald, “Life as a Pilgrimage and as Theater” in Modern Essays on Eighteenth-Century
Literature , ed. Leopold Damrosh, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, page 181.
5
Idem, page 183.
6
Idem, page 183.
7
http://www.gradesaver.com/gullivers-travels/study-guide/section3/
8
http://www.gradesaver.com/gullivers-travels/study-guide/section2/
9
Idem.

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parties, he must have understood that political allegiance was important. Yet, political
bickering is often about such unimportant matters as the height of one’s heels”10.
So travelling to different parts of the world can bring didacticism both by musing
on God’s design and also by satirizing different life aspects of certain societies. I will end
this idea with Hunter’s idea that didacticism is a standard feature of the novel, early and
late, and the rhetoric associated with didactic aims remains crucial to its tone , pace and
effects.11
The travel novels and their function of satisfying the taste for surprise

The second function, which I have identified in this two novels, is the one that
Hunter12 appreciates as a widespread taste for surprise and wonder, a modern substitute
for an older lore that admitted metamorphoses and transformations, fairy godmothers
and houses made of cake. The human being is curious by his nature, so no wonder many
people like gossiping, they are interested in other people’s lives both for their
inquisitiveness and for their want of not making the same mistake (if there is any), or to
follow their example (if there is any).
“Robinson Crusoe” satisfies the curiosity of the 18-th-century readers especially
through its composition: it may be fascinating for some people to find out how a man was
the only survivor of a shipwreck, how he prepared and arranged his dwelling, how he
tamed his first animals and what he did with his first pet. Moreover, the book can offer a
sort of mental exercise and propose another answer to the question “What would I do
if…?”.
Exactly the same thing happens with “Gulliver’s Travels”. Finding out that there
are other peoples who live on the same planet with us, and nobody else has ever met
them, except one person, in our case Gulliver, can incite the reader to immediately
assimilate Gulliver’s four travels: to Lilliput (where live petty creatures), to
Brobdingnang (a land of giants), to Laputa (the floating island) and to the land of the
Houyhnhnms (a place where live horses endowed with reason).

10
Idem.
11
Hunter, Paul, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction, New York :
W.W. Norton, 1990, page 55.
12
Hunter, Paul, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction, New York :
W.W. Norton, 1990, page 33.

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 The epistemological function of the travel novels

Hunter13 states very clear the fact that most novels seem to begin in epistemology;
certainly most address epistemological issues in ways that suggest urgent engagement.
How do you know when someone loves you? How do you know you are fit (or destined)
for a certain course of life? How do you know whether, in a time of plague, you should
stay in the city or flee to the country? Etc. In the same way, the readers can put
themselves all sorts of questions regarding the content of the two novels, gaining in this
way o sort of role-switching with the protagonist and forcing themselves to find solutions
which fit them best: regarding “Robinson Crusoe”: “Would I have left home at eighteen
without my parents permission and knowing that this would bring them great sorrow as
they had already lost my big brother in the army?”, “What would I have done if I had not
been able to rescue the last provisions from the ship, how would I have preserved my
life?”, “What things in Robinson Crusoe’s attitude I would improve if I were in his
shoes?”; regarding “Gulliver’s Travels”: “Why would he choose to leave his family and
venture in the angry waves of the sea?”, “Why does Gulliver despise that much the
human beings, does not he know that we are not perfect, so we would never have a
perfect society?”, and so many other questions.
The advantage of the novels in general, is that they posses empathy and
vicariousness14 because, argues Hunter, perhaps novels probe so deeply and sensitively
(at their best) the subjectivity of one individual, novels typically give readers a sense of
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what it would be like to be someone else, how another identity would feel. The readers
see in front of their eyes a scene from life, because the novels are characterized by
credibility and probability16 , the readers being given the sensation that the witnessed
things happened according to the laws governing the everyday world. Automatically,

13
Hunter, Paul, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction, New York :
W.W. Norton, 1990, page 44.
14
Hunter, Paul, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction, New York :
W.W. Norton, 1990, page 24.
15
Idem.
16
Idem, page 23.

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their conscious begins to make scenarios and make them wonder how they would
presumably act under certain social, cultural, ethnic or other kind of pressures.

In conclusion, as I stated in the hypothesis, my aim was to demonstrate, according

to the Foucauldian perspective, that in the two chosen novels, “Robinson Crusoe” and
“Gulliver’s Travels”, can be found three functions of the travelling novel: didactic,
satisfying the taste for the surprise and the epistemological one. Furthermore, my analysis
tends to give as an answer to the question from the title, the first variant, which sustains
that the 18-th-century novels represent a source of musing, rather than of entertainment.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

•Hunter, Paul, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of

Eighteenth-Century English Fiction, New York : W.W.
Norton, 1990;
• Kroll, Richard, “Introduction“ to The English Novel, Vol. I:

1700 to Fielding, ed. Richard Kroll, Longman, 1998;

• http://www.gradesaver.com/gullivers-travels/study-
guide/section3/