Warfare and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Or, Why Eighteenth-Century Fiction Failed to Produce a War and Peace
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California
Volume 4, no. 3, April 1992
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
The topic of this essay has a short history. As a member of a panel at a conference of the Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in 1990, I had given a paper treating some of Defoe’s attitudes towards warfare. During the question period, Paul Alkon asked the question, “Why didn’t the eighteenth century produce a War and Peace?” Like everyone else, I attempted some kind of a response, but neither mine nor those of my fellow panelists seemed halfway satisfactory. If the question meant “Why did the eighteenth century not produce something equivalent to Tolstoy in England?” it was a non-starter. Why did the nineteenth or twentieth century not manage it either? … Why did eighteenth-century British fiction not produce an entirely successful novel which addressed, in serious terms, the important issues aroused by war — its sufferings and violence — in contrast to a vision of ordinary life with its sufferings and joys? This was clearly the thrust of Paul Alkon’s question — a question that should be answerable through an analysis of the development of fictions involving war as well as through an analysis of attitudes towards the military hero.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “War” include:
“Zealous for Their Own Way of Worship”: Defoe, Monarchy, and Religious Toleration during the War of the Quadruple Alliance
by MORGAN STRAWN (ECF 25.2, Winter 2012-13)
“Seeing something that was doing in the World”: The Form of History in Colonel Jack
by RUTH MACK (ECF 24.2, Winter 2011-12)
A Tale of Two Tactics: Laclos’s Novel Approach to Military Crisis and Reform
by JULIA ANNE OSMAN (ECF 22.3, Spring 2010)
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